We asked around and from Singapore (thank you Mr. Tan) e received the following:
Legendary Japanese producer of tonearms and pickups founded in 1964 by a former factory manager at Grace by the name of Osamu (Isamu) Ikeda, and introduced it's first product in the form of the Fidelity Research FR-1 moving coil cartridge in 1965, the company was formally named Kabushiki Kaisha Fidelity-Research and they were based in Tokyo (K.K. = Limited company).
The company made phonographic products that had an excellent reputation in particular their tonearms and MC pickups but company ran into financial difficulties in 1984 and was forced to close down in 85 or 86 (accounts vary). Ikeda-san however bounced back with his Ikeda Sound Labs company that makes specialised phonographic products with some influences from the earlier FR designs and Yazuo Osawa who worked as a designer with the company from 1982 till it's demise went on to found Shelter but the products of that company also show heavy FR influences in particular the Shelter 411 II.
There is more info on the company, its founder and its products on the web site of the FR Fan Club (In Japanese), noticably there is info on that page on how to repair some of their tonearms. We have some information on their models including Fidelity Research Pickups and Fidelity Research MC transformers.
