Page 50 - Hi-Fi_News_-_December_2020 video

Low/medium-output moving-coil cartridge
Made by: Excel Sound Co., Ltd, Yokohama, Japan
Supplied by: Air Audio Services Ltd,
Telephone: 01491 629 629
CARTRIDGE Web: www.excelsound.jp; www.airaudio.co.uk
Price: £3399

Hana Umami Red

From Japan comes an exquisitely fi nished flagship MC cartridge that’s cooking on gas
when it comes to serving up full-flavoured sound. Is value for money on the menu too?

Review: Adam Smith Lab: Paul Miller

y naming the flagship MC in its pole piece is cryogenically treated, as are
Hana pick-up range the Umami the front and rear yokes along with the
Red, Japanese cartridge 24-carat gold-plated output pins.
Bmaker Excel Sound has The company claims this process
played a clever stroke. Glance alters the crystal structure of
at the £3399 cartridge’s the various alloys advantageously,
exquisitely lacquered body and continuing the culinary
there are no prizes for guessing analogies by likening it to
why the name includes the ‘molecular gastronomy’.
word ‘Red’. But ‘Umami’? In
Japanese, ‘umami’ is one of fi ve POWDER ’N’ POLISH
tastes, along with sweetness, High-purity copper wire is used for
sourness, bitterness and saltiness. the generator coils and the number of
It has been variously translated as turns is reflected in a coil impedance

‘delicious’ and ‘savoury’, but umami of 6ohm. Using the general ‘rule of ten’
is said to be quite difficult to detect multiplication factor for phono stage

on its own. Rather, it combines with matching suggests an ideal cartridge load
other flavours to give a result that’s far of 60ohm or greater. This, along with the

greater than the sum of all parts. relatively generous output of 0.4mV [see
ABOVE: The Hana Umami Red’s ‘Auricle’ body PM’s Lab Report, p53], means the Umami
CHEF’S SPECIAL design features a multi-layered red Urushi Red should work happily into the vast
The recipe behind the Umami Red is as lacquer finish and ebony wood inlay at the front majority of MC phono inputs.

complex as an exotic chef’s special. A semi- The business end of the Umami Red
open design, it has at its heart an elegant- handcrafting. Automation is used where comprises a solid boron cantilever tipped
looking open generator [see pic, below], repeatability and speed are necessary, with a nude ‘microline’ diamond. Hana says
carefully clothed in an external body, but but the more intricate operations are still this is cut and polished to mimic the shape
not fully encapsulated by it. The cartridge carried out manually by trained craftsmen. of the stylus on the head of a vinyl cutting
is manufactured in Excel Sound’s Japanese As for the generator, this is based lathe. The idea is to offer the best fi t into
factory [see boxout, below], the assembly around a samarium-cobalt magnet and a the record groove, extracting all the detail,
process a combination of automation and square Permalloy armature. The generator’s with minimum noise and record wear.
The elegant and stylish body that
A BRILLIANT RETURN clothes the Umami Red is no less a work
of art. The body itself is made from A7075
Hana is one of the in-house brands of the Excel Sound Corporation, based in aluminium alloy – a modern version of the
Yokohama, Japan. Formed in 1970, the company initially made cartridges material originally known as duralumin,
under its own Excel brand, before becoming an OEM supplier to many large which was developed for use in the aircraft
manufacturers across the world, as well as Japanese companies including industry. Alloys in this category are easily
Pioneer, Trio, Sansui and Sanyo. It is said it once manufactured up to 50,000 MM moulded into the shape required while
cartridges per month during vinyl’s heyday. However, as interest in vinyl waned retaining good strength, despite their light
in the ’80s, the company diversified into lower-cost audio and video accessories, weight. In this instance, the gentle curve

though it retained a small role as an OEM supplier of cartridges. of the outer body edges is referred
In more recent times it was decided that demand was suffi cient to as an Auricle body design by
to re-start production of its own brands once more, and the Hana, suggesting the outer
result was the Hana range of cartridges introduced in 2015. shape of the human ear.
The word Hana means ‘Brilliant and Gorgeous’ in Japanese, The body itself is
so the company certainly made its intentions clear from the then coated with an

very beginning. All pick-ups in the Hana series are designed by Urushi lacquer finish – a
company owner Masao Okada-san, who has been with Excel Japanese traditional art
Sound since the beginning, and has considerable experience in that stretches back many
the engineering that goes into the company’s products. centuries. In the case
of the Umami Red, the

50 | www.hifi news.co.uk | DECEMBER 2020