Here is a quick tip.  Have you ever broken a wire trying to take the clips off of the back of your cartridge?  Read on

First of all, you should never be pulling on the wires.  Ever.  Given how thin some of today’s wiring is, at the very least you will be soldering that wire back on.  At the worst?  You snap the wire off inside the tonearm.  Time to ship it back and have it rewired, unless you are so brave to try it yourself.

Needle nose pliers pulling on the metal clips is a good way to do it also.  But keep in mind again, you should be pulling on the metal clips, not the wires.

So, what does Rudy use?  A screwdriver.  I never put my clips fully onto the cartridge.  There is plenty of length to the cartridge pins, and many of the clips engage quite well further out on the pins.

Here is my trick:  I put a flat blade jeweler’s screwdriver between the cartridge body and the clip (which as I said, is not fully pushed onto the pin).  I then gently pry or push the clip off of the pin with the screwdriver.  Do NOT scrape along the cartridge pin if at all possible–gold plating is very thin.  I have used this method many times and my tonearm clips and wiring are fully intact.

Have one that is difficult?  Use a knife blade.  I had to use this when the pin was too close to the cartridge body.  Yet again, be careful not to scrape that pin.  You can easily pry the pin off without scraping too much, and nudge it off only far enough to finish up the task with the screwdriver.