HANA Umami Red - MC Phono Cartridge - From Vinyl To Plastic

HANA Umami Red – MC Phono Cartridge

All images credit: Excel Sound Corporation.

HANA phono cartridges are manufactured by Japan’s Excel Sound Corporation. Since their introduction they have continued to attract a growing customer base, and deservedly so.

(華) Hana, in Japanese means “Brilliant and Gorgeous”, a cartridge born from superb design, engineering excellence, 40 years of hand assembling knowhow and continuously improved in-house techniques by the Excel founder and Sound Cartridge Master – Masao Okada-san. President Okada began researching phono cartridge design in 1964 and who’s skills and expertise have now been transferred to the artisans employed by Excel Sound. These highly skilled craftsmen hand-build the Hana cartridges with absolute precision and consistency, each being individually hand tuned and then fully tested in their laboratory prior to leaving the factory.

After auditioning the Hana SL and ML I settled upon the SL as an excellent performance/cost compromise, and I have never been happier with the performance of a cartridge.

Originally coined by the Japanese chemist Kikune Ikea-san in 1908, Umami is the fifth taste category after salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. It’s said to describes that very pleasing or delicious flavour on the palette, a synergistic effect resulting in higher taste intensity.

HANA’s cartridge designer Masao Okada believes this approach can be applied to his Umami Red; the cartridge’s specific technical ingredients melding together to become more than the sum of their parts.

The new flagship in the HANA range, the Umami Red moving coil cartridge “combines brilliant materials and classic Japanese techniques with modern audio engineering.” It includes ebony wood, rare-earth magnets, precision-cut diamond, high-purity copper wires, Urushi lacquering, and CNC machined Duralumin.

The cryogenically treated MC generator features a samarium/cobalt magnet with a Permalloy square plate armature, hand-wound with high purity 30-micron copper wire for an internal impedance of 6Ω and .4mV output. A Nude Microline stylus is bonded to a solid Boron cantilever for tracing the most delicate musical nuances from the LP.

Auricle™ Cartridge body

The cart body features exclusive Auricle body design which mimics the shape of the human outer ear. This is said to “rigidly support the Open Air Moving Coil generator.” Machined from A7075 aluminium, the Duralumin body features an Ebony Wood inlay on its front facia which HANA says “provides specific damping properties”. Tapped mounting holes securely attach the cart to the tonearm. The body is finished in a multi-layered Urushi lacquer finish originating from the famous Japanese Makie-artistic tradition.

Boron cantilever

Boron, with a hardness comparable to diamond, was selected for the HANA- Umami Red to rigidly hold the Microline stylus. This solid Boron cantilever allows the smallest audible details and micro-dynamics to be transmitted without loss to the moving coil generator, capturing the artists’ intent.

Microline stylus

The ‘nude’ natural diamond stylus is cut and polished to mimic the cutting head stylus used to master or “cut” all vinyl records. The Boron cantilever rigidly holds the Microline stylus so that the smallest audible details and micro-dynamics are transmitted without loss to the moving coil generator.

Moving coil generator

The rare earth samarium/cobalt magnet material selected for the HANA- Umami Red generator provides the best electro-magnetic energy, a requirement for this very musical design. Pure copper wires are expertly hand-wound onto the classic square plate Permalloy armature.

Cryogenic processing

This ‘cold annealing’ process at near absolute zero temperature is used to treat many of the components in the HANA-Umami Red generator as well as the gold-plated signal output pins. The cryogenic process is said to alter the molecular structure of the materials, producing a transformative quality similar to “molecular gastronomy”.