Savory, Synergistic, Memorable, Pleasantly Intense: Japan-Made Hana Umami Red (UR) Low-Output Moving-Coil Cartridge Offers Breathtaking Performance
Foodies have long recognized the worth of umami: Savory, memorable, long-lasting, delicious, pleasantly intense, completely synergistic. The same can be said of the Hana Umami Red (UR) low-output moving-coil cartridge, which follows in the line of the company's award-winning E, S, and M Series to offer audiophiles phenomenal value and utterly breathtaking performance. Featuring an ebony wood inlay, rare-earth magnets, precision-cut microline diamond stylus, high-purity copper wires, boron cantilever, Urushi lacquering, and CNC-machined Duralumin body with an exclusive Auricle design that mirrors the shape of a human ear, the hand-made UR is designed by master cartridge builder Maseo Okada-san and manufactured in-house in Japan by Excel Sound.
Offering seamless integration of its carefully selected parts, UR plays vinyl LPs with rapturous detail, warmth, body, richness, and presence. Its nude stylus mimics the cutting head of a master head stylus to accurately portray everything within the LP groove and trace even complex passages with effortless beauty. Both delicate nuances and impactful dynamics come to life with astounding liveliness and energy. Relatedly, the boron cantilever allows the smallest bits of micro-information to come to the fore without loss, transmitting what your favorite artists intended you to hear.
In sum, UR combines high-grade materials with classic, proven, Japanese techniques and modern audio engineering to create an analog instrument that both looks and sounds like royalty. UR also utilizes cryogenic processing on many of its components (including the generator and gold-plated signal output pins) to further its transformational abilities. And let's not forget its multi-layered Urushi lacquer finish, which stems from Japan's decades-old Makie-artistic tradition. The classic and complex procedure consists of a black Urushi painted undercoat, elaborate red-coloration process incorporating fine silver powder, the "hana" name printing with pure gold powder, and final lacquer coating with multiple polishing steps. The final result: A flagship MC cartridge that you'll never forget.
"Consistently producing deliciously enjoyable class-leading performance, the Hana Umami Red (designed by Excel Sound Corporation's Masao Okada-san) instantly moved towards the front of the pack when compared with cartridges in the same price range."
—The Absolute Sound, 2021 Phono Cartridge of the Year Award
"The Umami Red is that rare jewel in phono cartridges; a design that gives you both the sort of detail and precision of sound that presents whatever music you put on the platter with a laser-guided focus on the recording itself, and musical grace and passion."
– Hi-Fi+, Cartridge of the Year Award
Auricle Cartridge Body
The Umami Red exclusive Auricle body design mimics the shape of the human outer ear to rigidly support the "open air" MC generator. The unique body shape is machined from A7075 aluminum, one of the strongest and lightest alloys used in aerospace engineering. The Duralumin body features an ebony wood inlay on its front facia to provide specific damping properties and tapped mounting holes assure secure attachment to the tonearm.
Boron Cantilever
Boron, with a hardness comparable to diamond, is selected for 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.
Moving-Coil Generator
The rare-earth samarium/cobalt magnet material chosen for the Umami Red generator offers exceptional 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 Umami Red generator as well as the gold-plated signal output pins. The cryogenic process alters the molecular structure of the materials, producing a transformative quality similar to molecular gastronomy.
