Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

Very few artisan cartridge brands actually mount their own diamonds or wind their own coils – this is the preserve of specialist OEM producers including China’s Skyanalog [HFN Sep ’24 & Mar ’25] and Excel Sound in Yokohama, Japan. Formed in 1970, the Excel Sound Corporation was once the go-to supplier of high-quality MMs for brands including Pioneer, Trio (Kenwood), Sansui and Sanyo. During the first vinyl boom it was producing over 50,000 units per month, and although it diversified its business interests from the 1980s, Excel Sound remained a supplier of bespoke MC cartridges for the likes of Sumiko in the US. In 2015, as the ‘vinyl revival’ promised a viable economy of scale, Excel Sound launched its own MCs under the Hana brand [HFN Dec ’20 & Mar ’26].

In practice, the Yokohama connection is about the only thing Hana and Sumiko have in common as the magnet and yoke structures differ between the two brands. The armature and coil windings are also distinct for where the Hana carts have a square former, Sumiko’s mechanism has always used an X- or cross-shape former to support the copper coils [see picture above]. Depending on how the magnetic circuit is arranged, one shape or the other will offer the optimum profile to cut the lines of flux between the poles. Excel Sound clearly has great expertise here, as it does in mounting an exquisitely fine Shibata stylus onto the end of the crimped, stiffened alloy cantilever seen here – moving (tip)mass is reduced, the pipe bending mode is pushed outside of the audioband and frequency response is impressively extended [see PM's Lab Report]. PM