A hand-built Japanese moving coil that pairs the Umami Red's boron cantilever and Microline stylus with an Alnico motor, for clear, quiet and very natural sound.
Hana cartridges are built by Excel Sound in Japan, which makes the major parts in-house and assembles each cartridge by hand. The Umami Blue sits alongside the Umami Red. It shares the Red's precision-cut Microline nude diamond, boron cantilever and high-purity copper coils, but uses an Alnico-magnet generator derived from the Hana ML. The magnetic circuit is cryogenically treated pure iron with a Permalloy armature. It is housed in Hana's Auricle body, CNC-machined from duralumin, with a thermoset melamine finish and 24K gold-plated output pins.
Reviewers keep describing the Umami Blue as clear and quiet. Tracking Angle heard silky, extended highs and lows, tight bass, very low groove noise and fine microdynamics, with only a slightly lean lower midrange. Audiophilia found it neutral rather than warm, with an unusually clean background, sharp imaging and a wide soundstage. It is revealing, so clean records pay off. It is a low-output design (0.4 mV), so plan on an MC phono stage with about 60–66 dB of gain or a suitable step-up transformer. Hana specifies a load above 80 Ω, and both reviewers ran it at 100 Ω. At 10.8 g with medium compliance, it suits medium-mass tonearms.
| Type | Low-output moving coil (MC) |
| Output | 0.4 mV at 1 kHz |
| Internal impedance | 8 Ω |
| Recommended load | Greater than 80 Ω (100 Ω a good starting point) |
| Tracking force | 2.0 g |
| Compliance | 10 × 10⁻⁶ cm/dyne at 100 Hz (est. 17 × 10⁻⁶ at 10 Hz) |
| Weight | 10.8 g |
| Stylus | Microline nude diamond |
| Cantilever | Boron |
| Magnet | Alnico |
| Frequency response | 15 Hz – 50 kHz |
| Channel separation / balance | 30 dB at 1 kHz / 0.5 dB |
| Body | Duralumin, melamine thermoset finish |
| Also available | Hana Umami Red (samarium-cobalt magnet, duralumin and ebony body) |
Pearl Audio is an authorized Hana dealer. Call or visit our Portland showroom to talk about matching a cartridge to your tonearm and phono stage.
