Jelco Tonearm Manufacturer Closes
So far this is just a strong rumor, but the Jelco web site and various industry professionals are indicating that there are problems ahead.
Has the Ichikawa Jewel Company – the Japanese manufacturer behind Jelco, which has been manufacturing phono cartridges, tonearms and turntable accessories for almost a 100 years closed its doors?
It was reported last week that president and CEO of Ichikawa Jewel, Takako Ichikawa, sent an email to all his distributors advising them of the closure, which he attributed to a combination of the Covid-19 pandemic and the difficulty of maintaining the company’s engineering tools and aging staff.
Here are a couple of extracts from the e-mail that purportedly came from Takako Ishikawa:
“The novel corona virus pandemic continue to have a significant impact on our production lines, and so I have decided to terminate our business effective immediately.”
“For the past few years, the business has endured a decline in labor productivity due to health issues arising from our aging skilled engineers. Furthermore, due to our obsolete mechanical equipment, performing maintenance on them has become difficult.”
If Jelco closes it doors it will not only deprive individual users of their excellent range of arms but also those turntable manufacturers for whom Jelco built their arms on an OEM basis. This is quite a severe blow to the industry especially as it comes on the heals of SME stopping the retail sale of its tonearms.
