Hana Cartridges: Overview of the Range

Hana is one of the few cartridge brands that has managed to build a following almost entirely on word of mouth. The cartridges are designed and hand-assembled by Excel Sound Corporation in Japan, a company that has been building moving coil generators for more than fifty years, much of that time as an OEM supplier producing cartridges sold under other, more famous names. In 2015 Excel began selling under its own brand, Hana, a name chosen to suggest “brilliant and gorgeous” sound.

What makes the range worth understanding as a whole is how methodically it is laid out. Every model is a moving coil design, and almost every tier is offered in both high output and low output versions, so the decision is rarely “which Hana is best” and more often “which Hana suits my phono stage and my tonearm”. This article walks through the full current line-up, from the £499 entry models to the £8,249 flagship, and explains what actually changes as you move up.

High output or low output: the first decision

Before comparing models, it is worth being clear about the suffixes, because they determine compatibility more than they determine quality.

• H (high output) models produce roughly 2.0mV, similar to a moving magnet cartridge. They have a higher internal impedance (typically 130Ω) and want a load of 47kΩ, which means they run happily into a standard MM phono stage.
• L (low output) models produce around 0.4mV to 0.5mV, with a much lower internal impedance. They need a dedicated MC input, a high-gain phono stage, or a step-up transformer.

Neither is inherently better. The low output versions have fewer coil windings and therefore less moving mass, which in principle helps tracking and high-frequency behaviour, but a good MM stage will usually beat a mediocre MC stage. Match the cartridge to the phono stage you actually own.

Hana E Series: the entry point

Hana EH and Hana EL

The E series is where the range starts, and it is where a lot of people first hear what a moving coil does differently to a good moving magnet. Both models use a synthetic elliptical diamond mounted on a rigid aluminium cantilever, with a cross-shaped armature and a composite low-resonance plastic body. Frequency response is quoted at 15Hz to 25kHz, channel separation at 25dB, and tracking force at 2g. At 5g, they are light enough to work in almost any modern tonearm without counterweight problems.

The elliptical profile is the limiting factor here rather than the generator. It sits in the groove less precisely than the Shibata and Microline profiles further up the range, so the last octave is slightly less resolved and inner-groove tracking is not quite as composed. What you do get is the characteristic Hana balance: a slightly warm midrange, easy dynamics, and a lack of the grain that often shows up at this price. As a first moving coil on a deck like a Rega Planar 3 or a Technics SL-1500C, it is a sensible place to begin.

The Hana EH is the high output version, with a 130Ω internal impedance and a recommended load above 47kΩ, so it works with the MM stage built into most amplifiers.

Buy Hana EH at Premium Sound – £499

The Hana EL is the low output version at 0.5mV, with a 30Ω internal impedance and a recommended load above 400Ω. Choose it if you already have an MC input worth using.

Buy Hana EL at Premium Sound – £499

Hana S Series: the Shibata step

Hana SH and Hana SL

The original S series keeps the same generator architecture and 5g body as the E series but replaces the bonded elliptical with a nude natural diamond Shibata stylus. That single change does more than the price difference suggests. A nude stylus has no metal shank, so there is less mass at the tip, and the Shibata profile presents a much longer contact patch to the groove wall. Quoted frequency response extends to 32kHz and channel separation improves to 28dB, but the audible result is mostly about tracking: sibilance settles down, massed strings hold together, and the final few minutes of a busy side stay clean rather than getting congested.

The Hana SL is the low output model at 0.5mV, with a 30Ω internal impedance and a 400Ω recommended load. It became something of a default recommendation in the £600 bracket for good reason.

Buy Hana SL at Premium Sound – £639

The Hana SH is the high output equivalent, running into a standard 47kΩ MM input. It is the obvious choice if your amplifier’s phono stage has no MC setting and you would rather spend the budget on the cartridge than on a new preamp.

Buy Hana SH at Premium Sound – £639

Hana S Mk II Series: a genuine redesign

The Mk II models keep the Shibata stylus and the S series price bracket, but the rest of the cartridge has been reworked using ideas borrowed from the ML and Umami designs. The changes are worth listing because they are structural rather than cosmetic.

• Tapered aluminium cantilever, stiffer than the parallel-wall tube used before, which transfers groove modulation to the generator with less flex
• Cryogenic treatment applied to the yoke, pole pieces and gold terminal pins
• Alnico magnet with a cross-coil generator wound with high-purity 30-micron copper wire
• Non-resonant body shape derived from the M series, damped with a matte elastomeric resin finish and topped with a brass cap
• Integral threaded mounting holes, so no fiddling with loose nuts above the headshell
• Body weight up from 5g to 8.6g, which improves coupling and suits medium and higher-mass arms

That last point matters more than it sounds. The original S series was light enough that it could feel slightly underdamped in a heavier arm. At 8.6g with threaded inserts, the Mk II couples more solidly to the headshell, and the practical result is firmer bass and better-defined leading edges.

The Hana SL Mk II drops the generator impedance to 8Ω, which makes it easier to load correctly across a wider spread of MC phono stages.

Buy Hana SL Mk II at Premium Sound – £699

The Hana SH Mk II applies the same body, cantilever and cryogenic upgrades in high output form for MM phono stages.

Buy Hana SH Mk II at Premium Sound – £699

The Hana SL Mono Mk II is a true mono design rather than a stereo cartridge with its channels strapped together, with a 23Ω generator and 0.4mV output. Because it is only sensitive to lateral movement, it ignores the vertical noise that a stereo cartridge picks up from a mono pressing. On original jazz and blues mono LPs the difference is not subtle: surface noise drops away and the centre image gains real weight. If a meaningful part of your collection is mono, this is the most cost-effective upgrade in the entire range.

Buy Hana SL Mono Mk II at Premium Sound – £699

Hana M Series: Microline and Delrin

Hana MH and Hana ML

The M series is where Hana moves from “excellent value” to “serious cartridge”. The stylus becomes a nude Microline, a profile cut to mimic the shape of the cutting stylus used to master the lacquer, so it reaches further down the groove wall and traces detail that wider profiles average out. Quoted frequency response widens to 12Hz to 45kHz and channel separation rises to 30dB.

The body is machined from black polyoxymethylene, better known by DuPont’s Delrin trademark, a thermoplastic chosen for hardness and resonance damping, with a gold-plated copper resonance plate integrated into the body. Critical parts of the magnetic circuit are cryogenically treated, and the coils use higher-purity copper than the S series. Weight rises to 9.5g and the mounting holes are threaded.

Sonically the M series is where you start to hear space rather than just detail. Reverb tails decay instead of stopping, instruments occupy defined positions rather than approximate ones, and there is a sense of the room the recording was made in.

The Hana ML is the low output version with an 8Ω internal impedance and a recommended load above 100Ω. It rewards a good MC stage and a well-set-up arm.

Buy Hana ML at Premium Sound – £1,199

The Hana MH offers the same stylus, body and generator technology in high output form for MM inputs.

Buy Hana MH at Premium Sound – £1,199

Hana Umami Series: the flagship designs

The Umami cartridges are the work of Excel’s master designer Masao Okada-san, and they share a body concept Hana calls the Auricle, CNC machined from A7075 duralumin and shaped to hold the open-air generator rigidly. All three quote a frequency response of 15Hz to 50kHz and 30dB of channel separation, and all three track at 2g.

Hana Umami Blue

The Hana Umami Blue is the most interesting value proposition in the upper range. It takes the Umami Red’s nude Microline diamond, solid boron cantilever and high-purity copper wire, then pairs them with the Alnico-based generator from the ML. Boron is close to diamond in hardness and extremely light, so the cantilever holds the stylus without flexing and passes micro-dynamic information through rather than smearing it. A white POM inlay on the front face adds damping. Weight is 10.8g and the recommended load is above 80Ω.

Buy Hana Umami Blue at Premium Sound – £2,229

Hana Umami Red

The Hana Umami Red was the original Umami and remains the reference-level stereo cartridge in the range for most listeners. It combines ebony wood, rare-earth magnets, a precision-cut diamond, high-purity copper windings and Urushi lacquering over CNC machined duralumin. Trackability is quoted at 70µm at 2g, which is a demanding figure, and it weighs 10.5g. This is a cartridge that repays a properly aligned arm and a phono stage with a very low noise floor, because it will show you what both are doing.

Buy Hana Umami Red at Premium Sound – £3,649

Hana Umami Black

The Hana Umami Black is the flagship, and it is not simply an Umami Red with a better cantilever. It introduces a diamond cantilever, a first for Hana, alongside a newly developed OKD generator with an integrated pole piece and rear yoke and an inverted U-shaped front yoke, engineered for both resonance control and magnetic field alignment. The magnet is rare-earth neodymium-iron-boron, and the armature is a 2mm square hybrid carbon permalloy design hand-wound with 30-micron 4N copper, giving 0.3mV output from a 5Ω generator. Recommended load is 50Ω or above, and the body is finished in Urushi lacquer bonded to aluminium by vapour deposition. It weighs 11.3g and is a special order item.

A diamond cantilever is the logical endpoint of the stiffness-versus-mass problem: nothing transmits energy from stylus to coils with less loss. Paired with a generator designed around it, the result is a level of transparency where the cartridge stops sounding like a component and starts sounding like an absence of one.

Buy Hana Umami Black at Premium Sound – £8,249

Setting up and loading

Two practical points apply across the range. First, every model tracks at 2g, which is on the higher side and deliberately so, since it keeps the stylus stable in the groove. Set it accurately with a digital scale rather than trusting the counterweight dial.

Second, loading matters more as you move up. The low output models below the Mk II generation want a load roughly 20 to 30 times their internal impedance, which is why Hana quotes 400Ω for the 30Ω SL and above 100Ω for the 8Ω ML. If your phono stage has selectable loading, start at the recommended figure and adjust by ear from there. Too low a load will sound flat and closed in at the top; too high can push the treble forward and make the presentation restless.

Get those two things right and the whole range does what it was designed to do, which is to make records sound like performances rather than pressings.