Hana is helping to kick off the month of March in the exact right way by announcing their new Umami Blue cartridge, which follows in the fine moving-coil footsteps (so to speak) of their vaunted Umami cartridge series.
The Hana Umami Blue high-end moving-coil (MC) cartridge comes from Excel Sound’s master cartridge designer, Maseo Okada. According to Hana, the Umami Blue “combines the essential ingredients of the Hana Umami Red with the Alnico-based generator of the Hana ML.” The Umami Blue also incorporates the Auricle body design that’s exclusive to the Umami series.
The Umami Blue’s body features a white POM inlay on its front facia to provide damping properties, and it’s said to act in homage to the aforementioned Hana ML, the company’s first cartridge to use a POM body. Tapped and threaded mounting holes in the Auricle body are further said to “assure secure attachment to the tonearm.”
A special Melamine Thermosetting Process (MTP) is used to enamel the Umami Blue’s body — which is CNC-machined from Duraluminum — with a brilliant blue glossy finish. The Umami Blue also shares other key Umami Red elements, including a precision-cut Microline Nude diamond stylus, Boron cantilever, and high-purity copper wires.
Finally, the Hana Umami Blue MC cartridge has an SRP of $2,500.
For more about Hana cartridges, go here.
To find a Hana dealer near you, go here.
HANA UMAMI BLUE CARTRIDGE
($2,500)
Features & Specs
Frequency response: 15 to 50,000Hz
Output balance: 0.5dB/1kHz
Channel separation: 30dB/1kHz
Coil impedance: 8Ω with 0.4mV output
Load impedance: >80 Ω
Tracking force: 2g
Trackability: 70μm/2g
Dynamic compliance: 10 x 10 (–6) cm/dyne (100Hz); estimated at 17 x 10 (–6) cm/dyne at 10Hz
Output pins: 24k gold-plated
Weight: 10.8g
COMMENTS
In the realm of sales and marketing, I wonder how many people will go for this model vs popping for the Umami Red.
1,500 dollar difference, but as long as I am going to making it rain, would I stop with Blue?
This calls for a Hana Shoot Out!
I wish Hana success.
we don't yet know the difference in selling price (as opposed to MSRP) and Hana cartridges are frequently discounted. If the performance is close to the Umami (that's just fun to say) but a couple grand cheaper, maybe some of us will choose to make it sprinkle instead.
I only buy Ortofon (also sometimes the models rebadged by Project) but not at this price. Otherwise for $500 less there would be a Van Den Hul - MC-One Special (although I prefer the color of the Frog or DDT II and the names are prettier).
Hopefully in this case they do! The spec for freq response says 15 to 15,000hz…hopefully that is wrong! On the Hana web page, the high end goes out to 50,000hz…which would be more like it, lol.
Otherwise, this cartridge is going to sound a little…off.
I believe there's a glaring error in your "Features and Specs" section. You've misstated the frequency response as "Frequency response: 15 to 15,000Hz" which should be "Frequency response: 15 to 50,000Hz"
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