Hana SL Mono Moving Coil Cartridge Review; Beautiful, Full-Bodied Music

Why a Mono Cartridge?

As a reviewer, over the years I have sometimes been accused of liking mono recording more than stereo. I don’t think that’s so, but I often prefer mono recordings of smaller works. I’ve had some people ask me why they even make mono cartridges anymore? The answer is simple; there is a lot of great music out there that is only available on mono, and it sounds much better played with a mono cartridge. By a mono cartridge, I mean a cartridge designed from the ground up to play monaural records.

There are several choices for playing your mono recordings. You can, of course, just play them with your stereo cartridge. On new reissues of mono recordings, this is pretty fine indeed, but on older mono recordings it is often just too noisy.

Another option is to have a preamp or a phono preamp with a mono switch. If you look at early stereo preamps like a McIntosh C22, for example, you will notice a switch that lets you select the left channel, the right channel, the left plus right channel or stereo. The reason for this switch is that with a mono recording, the signal in the grove is modulated only in the horizontal plane. Stereo recordings are cut into the vinyl at a forty-five-degree angle with a separate channel of information on each of the groove walls. A good switch like on these old preamps really helps, but the very best way to play an older mono LP is with a mono cartridge.

A real mono cartridge is wired and built to pick up signals from the record only in the horizontal plane. This is very different from a stereo cartridge, which requires the stylus to pick up signals in both the horizontal and the vertical plane. On a mono record, noise can be in the vertical plane, but a mono recording won’t pick it up. Another thing you get from a real mono cartridge is a sound that is more substantial and bigger than you’d get when playing the same recording using a stereo cartridge.

Introducing the Hana SL Mono

I was excited when I heard that Tokyo’s Excel Sound Corporation, the parent company behind Hana, was bringing out a mono cartridge. I have been very impressed with their cartridges so far, and I’m always on the lookout for a great mono cartridge. Hana translates as “brilliant and gorgeous,” and their cartridges have been. They use Excel’s best materials, including alnico magnets, cross-shaped armatures, and proprietary manufacturing processes.

The Hana SL Mono design has a 0.7 mil Shibata stylus on an aluminum cantilever. This means that it is ideal for most mono originals. Yes, some of the early ’50s and 60’s recordings were meant for a 1 mil size stylus, but the .7 seems a good size to play both older and more modern recordings.

As the L in SL means, this cartridge is a low output (.5mV/1kHz) moving coil cartridge with an impedance of 30Ω/1KHz. The suggested load is greater than 400Ω. This means you need a phono preamp that has a moving coil stage with very adjustable settings. If you choose to use a SUT, as I did, it needs to be adjustable so that you can get the correct load for the SL Mono.

Setup

One of the few things about the Hana cartridges that I do not like is that they are not pre-threaded for mounting screws. My eyes and hands are getting too old for working with small screws and nuts.

After getting the cartridge mounted in the AMG 12 Turbo tonearm, I used it with an Allnic adjustable step-up transformer and the Audio Hungary Qualiton Phono Preamp that I reviewed back in September. The amplification was handled by the First Watt SIT-3 and the Emia Remote Autoformer. The speakers were my Teresonic Ingenium speakers.

With its square front and easy to see stylus it was straightforward to get all the geometry set up. When set up, the Hana SL Mono is an outstanding tracking cartridge. It tracked older mono records much better than stereo cartridges. It not only tracked them better, but they played much quieter.

The Sound

So, how did monaural recordings sound with the Hana SL Mono cartridge? To put it simply they sounded like beautiful music, full-bodied with great colorful textures that were truly alive. The sound had all of this along with a realistic musical scale and big dynamics. All of this produced a sense of exciting drama to the music.

To me, the midrange is where the heart of the music is, and a cartridge has to get this right. The Hana allowed the performance to come to life in the midrange. The music had beautiful flow from note to note. Yes, the transients were fast, but at the same time, the timbre and tone of the instruments sounded just so right. I want to say again that the midrange was alive, beautiful, big and colorful.

If you’re a regular reader, you know how important voices are to me. With this mono cartridge, they sounded warm but not too lush. Voices seemed to flow out into the room with this cartridge in my system. The timing and cadence of voices were very convincing. Overall voices sounded pure, simple, and lifelike.

The cartridge was organic so that voices sounded as if they were part of a whole person up there singing just for me. With this cartridge, you can listen to Ella, Louie or The Beatles, and you will be amazed at how their unique phrasing comes through into your room. With all this, you also get bass that is tight, dynamic, powerful and big.

Conclusion

Personally, I have no problem spending four figures for a great mono cartridge, but the new Hana SL Mono is $750, and it is in league with the mono cartridges from EMT, Miyajima and Ortofon SPU. Yes, the SL Mono lacks a little of the bloom in the midrange of these cartridges and a little of their tonal color, but it is very musical and quite a bargain. If you have been considering a mono cartridge and don’t want to break the bank, I highly recommend the Hana SL Mono.

Specifications 

Stylus: Nude Diamond Shibata
Output Level: 0.5 mv / 1 kHz
Output Balance: <1.5db/1KHz
Vertical Tracking Force: 2g
Track Ability: 70µm/2g 
Frequency Response: 15-32,000Hz
Impedance: 30Ω/1KHz
Inductance: 40 µH
Suggested Load Impedance: >400Ω
Cartridge Weight: 5g
Cartridge Color: black
Price:  $750