Cartridges — JICO Clipper MM

The JICO Clipper is an MM pickup, handmade in Japan by a company best known for replacement styli, and it is supplied already fitted in its own headshell. Its design draws on the Audio Empire and Swing record needles, and a glossy black UVCRM resin body carries an ApexGlide finger lift shaped like the tail fin of an airliner, in the retro-futurist styling of the 1950s. The price with stylus is USD 500 or GBP 399.95.

Key specs that matter

Output from the moving-magnet generator measures 5.0 to 8.0 mV at 5 cm/sec, with a frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 kHz. It is meant to see a load of 47 kohm, and its DC resistance is 1.38 kohm. Channel separation is 20 dB at 1 kHz, channel balance is within 1.5 dB and compliance is 4.6 lateral and 5.1 vertical. Tracking force is 2.0 g plus or minus 0.2 g. The whole assembly, headshell included, weighs 16.7 g. The listed uses cover both home listening and DJ work.

Engineering and use context

JICO calls the cantilever the first tapered S cantilever. It is aluminium and narrows towards the tip, which cuts moving mass at the stylus end while keeping the S profile known from Shure designs. The stock stylus, sold as CRCP/MK1, carries a solid natural diamond with a conical tip of 0.12 mm diameter, a tip size of 0.7 mil, and a rated life of 200 hours. A spare CRCP/MK1 costs USD 135 or GBP 109.95. The body also accepts the JICO N44-7 and N44G styli and the wider set of Shure 44-series needles, including JICO Nude Diamond, synthetic diamond, Morita wood cantilever and SAS versions, as well as vintage Shure originals. That lets one body be used with several tip shapes and cantilever materials without remounting. The mounting screws are stainless steel, and UVCRM stands for an ultraviolet curable resin mixture.

Pairing

Because the cartridge comes mounted in a headshell with a curved-arm geometry, it suits turntables whose S-shaped or J-shaped tonearms take a detachable headshell on the standard bayonet. The output level matches ordinary MM phono inputs without a step-up device, and the compliance figures suit tonearms of middling effective mass. The Clipper is sold under the code J-AAC0868.

Alternatives

The JICO Clipper-S keeps the same generator and tapered S cantilever but uses an angled headshell for straight tonearms.