Hana Umami Red
The Hana Umami Red is a high-end moving coil phono cartridge renowned for achieving a synergistic, "delicious" musical experience through the combination of brilliant materials, classic Japanese craftsmanship, and modern audio engineering. Its special qualities lie in its detailed design and construction process, which aim to extract exceptional detail and present a balanced, emotionally engaging sound quality.
- The Umami Red is distinguished by a specific blend of components and techniques: "Umami" Concept: Named after the Japanese word for a fifth taste sensation that results from a perfect, synergistic combination of ingredients, the cartridge is designed so all its elements work in concert to create a rich, intense, and memorable musical experience.
- Design and Materials: The exclusive "Auricle" body is CNC-machined from A7075 aluminum alloy (duralumin), a strong and light aerospace material, to suppress unwanted resonance. It features an ebony wood inlay for specific damping properties and a multi-layered Urushi lacquer finish, a traditional Japanese artistic technique, which also contributes to the sound and aesthetics.
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High-Specification Generator Components:
- Cantilever: A solid boron cantilever, selected for its diamond-like hardness and rigidity, ensures minimal signal loss from the stylus to the generator.
- Stylus: It uses a nude Microline natural diamond stylus, which is shaped to mimic the cutting head used to master vinyl records, allowing for extremely precise tracking of the groove and retrieval of the most delicate details.
- Magnet & Coil: The generator uses a rare-earth samarium/cobalt magnet and high-purity copper wires hand-wound onto a square plate permalloy armature to achieve an optimal electro-magnetic energy transfer.
- Cryogenic Processing: Many critical components in the generator and the signal output pins are treated with a "cold annealing" cryogenic process, which restructures the metals at a molecular level for a more natural and controlled sound quality.
- Handcrafted Assembly: Every major part is manufactured in-house by Excel Sound, a Japanese company with over 50 years of experience, and each cartridge is meticulously hand-assembled by highly trained craftsmen.
- An expansive soundstage and excellent instrumental separation.
- A smooth, natural, and rich musicality with a detailed, extended top end that avoids harshness.
- Powerful, articulate, and fast bass response.
- Superb tracking ability that minimizes surface noise and distortion.
- Overall, the Hana Umami Red is considered a top-tier reference cartridge that punches well above its price class, offering a performance level comparable to much more expensive models.
Reviews
"Umami Red takes that smooth, even sound signature and greatly expands the focus, clarity, dynamic power, and imaging to something at a far greater level than I’ve heard in most cartridges. One of the biggest factors I enjoyed was just how much instrumental separation was accomplished while still maintaining a rich and coherent musical presentation."
"The Umami Red is not just the most engaging cartridge I’ve had in my system, but it’s one of the most engaging cartridges I’ve ever heard, and that includes time spent with very high-end systems and cartridges double its price. For listeners like me who have hung out in the 1-2k range of moving coil carts for many years, the Umami Red represents one of the smartest “steps up” to the high end you can make in my opinion."
read the review in Audiophilia
"The Hana Umami Red is a feast for all the senses - its performance proved equally impressive at conveying fine detail, timbre, soundstage and crucially emotion"
read the review in Ear
"The Red's remarkable resolution extends well into the upper registers as well, which are extremely well extended and capable of revealing delicate detail, conferring an articulate and lively sense of shimmer and air. In my time with the Red, it was never harsh or showed any etch, edge, or glare, unless those properties were part of the recording under consideration"
"The Red's midrange performance is practically blustering with life, offering fertile detail and saturated with authentic textures, harmonic bloom, and a purity of tone that is disarming. This wealth of vibrantly colored, vividly detailed, and richly textured tonality coalesces to imbue instruments with an almost unnerving amalgam of correct timbre and physical essence, affording a veracity of corporality that approaches that of the absolute best I've heard."
"The bass performance of the Red was flat-out amazing! It is exceptionally well-extended and pitch-defined, capable of exposing remarkably detailed texture and delivering a degree of resolution that was both very compelling and utterly unexpected at this price."
read the review in Positive Feedback
Specifications
- Stylus Microline
- Cantilever Boron
- Magnetic Circuitry Pure Iron/Cryo Treatment
- Coil Wire High Purity Copper
- Cartridge Housing POM (Delrin) / Brass
- Output Level 2mv/1kHz
- Output Balance 0.5/1kHz
- Trackability 70 µm/2g
- Channel Separation 30dB/1kHz
- Frequency Response 10-50,000Hz
- Impedance <6Ω/1kHz
- Suggested Load Impedance 60kΩ
- Magnet Samarium Cobalt
- Vertical Tracking Force 2g
- Cartridge Weight 10.5g
- Body Material Duralumin (A7075), Ebony Wood
- Body Finish Gloss Urushi Lacquer/ Red
- Warranty 2 years
