After eight years of continuous development, we’re pleased to share that our icOn 5 preamplifier family has reached its highest level of maturity and quality. This year, we introduced a fully balanced model and the single-ended Dual, which includes both balanced and unbalanced inputs and outputs, ideal for audiophiles with minimalist systems.
Seeing no practical way to further enhance the icOn preamps, I’ve embarked on a new project to address an issue that has impacted me and millions of other audiophiles and music lovers for over 70 years. While the icOn 5 preamps will remain in production for years to come, there won’t be an icOn 6, 7, or a high-end version in the foreseeable future. However, we have an exciting, science-based product line planned for release next year.
My new direction for the next decade involves a journey back in time to address some long-standing, unresolved issues in my old passion—vinyl records. After a long pause, I returned to my vintage Dual and Thorens turntables this year, started collecting classical DECCA records (mostly mono), and discovered numerous persistent issues and unanswered questions.
The first, and most surprising, was this: aside from a few hundred experts worldwide with specialized knowledge and bespoke microscopes, there’s no reliable answer to the question, *when should I replace the stylus?* I spent the summer researching this topic, digging through over fifty years of material, only to find a sea of misleading advice, impractical methods, and anecdotes. From USB microscopes to smartphone photos, test record listening trials, and more, nearly all methods are either ineffective, overly complex, inconvenient, or too costly.
It seems likely that major cartridge manufacturers know the truth but may prefer not to share it, as frequent stylus replacements drive sales. The general recommendation to replace expensive styli every 300-700 hours leaves most listeners in the dark, and tracking these hours often involves clunky methods like chess clocks or kitchen timers. So, in the end, many of us reluctantly spend $100-$500–$1000 on replacement styli just to protect our precious vinyl.
That’s why my first new product will be an easy-to-use, affordable measurement device—a dedicated FFT analyzer for precise distortion and other measurements—paired with a test record to definitively answer the question: *when should I replace the stylus?* This product family will offer additional tools for precise cartridge setup, optimization of cartridge-phono preamp interaction, and more.
