About four years ago, the stand-alone tonearm market went through a bit of a crisis. First, in December 2019, SME announced that it would stop selling tonearms separately, effective immediately. From that point on, SME tonearms would be available only in combination with SME turntables. The decision seemed baffling: SME had been the tonearm company for more than 60 years; the company’s slogan was “the best pick-up arm in the world.” But they also just happened to make some really nice turntables.
More recently, SME partially reversed this decision, making their lower cost M2 series arms available for individual purchase again albeit at much higher prices. When Herb Reichert wrote about the M2-9 in 2016, it was an excellent value at $1099. At today’s price—$3395—it’s no longer a slam-dunk.
Five months later, in May 2020, we received the second blow in this double whammy of bad tonearm news. That’s when the Ichikawa Jewel Company of Japan, maker of Jelco tonearms, announced without warning that they were shutting down operations, closing their doors for good. They blamed a combination of an aging workforce, worn-out tooling that needed to be replaced, and the coronavirus pandemic. It seemed odd that nobody was lined up to rescue such an important cog in the turntable-manufacturing machine. Jelco may not have been a household name, but their products were used everywhere, often rebranded by other manufacturers. Even if your turntable’s tonearm wasn’t made by Jelco, there’s a strong likelihood that the cueing device attached to it was. Jelco’s arms were the Toyotas of the tonearm world, covering the lower end of the price spectrum from around $400 going up to about $2000 and delivering excellent value at each point.
We lost two key players all at once, but it’s not as if we suddenly had nowhere to turn for tonearms. Turntable manufacturers like Acoustic Signature, Clearaudio, Origin Live, Pro-Ject, Rega, and VPI all sell their tonearms separately, but for various reasons, I rarely see
