The Mutech RM Kanda Hyabusa


Anyone out there have this cartridge? Very intriguing design ala Transfiguration. Impedance is 1.5 ohms, Output 0.45mV, Compliance is not listed. $4500 and you get a two week trial period. Neat.  http://mockingbirddistribution.com/mutech-cartridges/
128x128mijostyn
A Lino C 2.0 + ZYX Ultimate 100 ( impedance 4 ohm ) is my current setup. The adjustable gain is set at +12db which achieves approximately 75 db with the 4 ohm input. Rob at Channel D had cautioned that using the highest gain may cause distortion due to overload margin. However, as I am also using a Lightspeed Passive Attenuator, I need all the help I can get in the gain department. My sense is that with my setup, an impedance of 4 ohm is really the upper limit of MC cartridge choices. 

I have therefore been extremely interested in low impedance MC's, My Sonic Labs, Transfiguration, Lyra.... and of course Mutech. I think Mutech makes part for Transfiguration and it uses parts from My Sonic Labs. While I am not in a position to upgrade or acquire a new cartridge right now,  I am especially interested in Mutech. It seems that the RM-Kanda Hyabusa is an export model, while the RM-Kanda is the top of the line retailing at $6,000. But with impedance or 2 ohm, it should work very with the Lino C. 
ledoux1238, what do you think of the Lino C overall. Is there any improvement over your last setup? I think you are forgetting the Air Tight cartridges. They are very closely related to My Sonic Labs. Same designer. These are great sounding cartridges but they are stiff, require heavy arms and although not terrible are not the greatest trackers. I lean towards the Lyra Atlas Lambda SL. Just over 1 ohm impedance, medium compliance for use in a lighter arm with less inertia. The top Ortofon cartridges are around 5 ohms, are great trackers and work well in intermediate mass arms. The Gold Note Tuscany is 4 ohms but on the stiff side. 
The present setup with the Lino C and Lightspeed Passive Attenuator is on paper diametrically opposite to my previous rig, MFA Luminescence A2. Both Fremer and the TAS reviewer called the Lino on the warm side of neutral. However, for me coming from a decade of listening to tube euphoria, the Lino is dead neutral. Or to put it another way, I did not know what neutral sounded like until I heard the Lino. The soundstage is perhaps not as wide as the Lumi, but everything with the stage is very well organized. The placement of instruments is very precise. Likewise, the bass is  not as powerful, but not as boomy as well.
what the Lino has taught me is that I like both vintage and ‘modern’ sound. Both are equally valid and enjoyable ways of presenting music. Instead of selling the Lumi, I have decided to send it back to Scott Frankland for a full update sometime in the future.
One problem I am experiencing with the Lino concerns the tonearm. The Trans Fi Terminator in use has bare wires going from cartridge leads to the phono preamp. It is unshielded. And proper cable shielding is very important in order to trigger the battery charging. Rob has given me pointers to make a twisted pair of bare wires which I have yet to implement. For the time being, I have to disconnect my tonearm cable after each listening session. I doubt this would be an for most arms.
@mijostyn  Of the cartridges you mentioned above, the Air Tight is most probably not for the Terminator arm. 
ledoux1238, I hate to a PITA but that arm is a problem for most cartridges and this is why. You need a compliant cartridge for the vertical effective mass of the Terminator but a low compliance cartridge for the horizontal effective mass which is more than twice, perhaps three times larger. Nobody makes a cartridge like that. You run into problems which ever way you go. You want to spread the two resonances out a little to flatten and spread out the resonance but tonearms like this spread them out way too far. If you want to lower FM distortion and like tangential tracking look at the Reed 5T and the Schroder LT arms. They accomplish tangential tracking with similar vertical and horizontal EM, they do not skate and they have a low moment of inertia. Tangential trackers that use animated carriages to move the arm across the record could also be made to work. There is a German arm that does a good job of this. Can't remember the name but the carriage is belt driven and the arm is silly money.
The Lino C requires balanced lines so you need to twist the pairs as Rob suggests and take the third leg from the tonearm ground and solder XLR connectors on. That should do it. What you are doing has to get old fast. 
You could also set up a terminal strip and use regular shielded cables from there. 
I like neutral. If I want more bass or treble for a given recording I can add or subtract it from my preamp. Frankly, I am usually happy to listen to recordings the way they are. It is like coloring a black and white picture.
Every piece of art has a time and place which is an inseparable part of that work. The best systems can pull more reality out of the worst recordings. Some audiophiles listen to music they really don't care for because it sounds good. Music lovers will take it any way it comes. 
Anyway, look at the Schroder LT. It is a bargain for what it is.
 
Mijostyn, Your indictment of the Trans-Fi tonearm would seem to be an indictment also of nearly every linear tracking tonearm, since they all have very high horizontal effective mass as compared to their vertical effective mass.  And yet there are thousands of happy audiophiles who use linear trackers.  (Okay, maybe only hundreds.)  Your critique raises the question of what is the comparative importance of horizontal vs vertical resonance in reproducing the full audio spectrum.  Since bass frequencies are primarily encoded in horizontal or lateral motion of the stylus, and since treble is primarily encoded in vertical displacement, I would think the question of resonance is very different for the two directions.  One guru mentioned that high effective mass in the horizontal direction is good for bass reproduction, because it inherently damps the overhang in stylus motion (the tendency for the stylus tip to keep moving due to its own inertia) once a bass tone has been transduced.  (I realize there is a guru for every opinion in audio.) Also, as you know, the formula we all commonly use to calculate tonearm resonance uses vertical compliance and vertical effective mass.  It's also difficult even to get the data for any given cartridge relevant to horizontal compliance.  So, I would say the situation is much muddier than you make it out to be, and furthermore that the demonstrable excellence of the Trans-Fi and some other top notch linear trackers, across the audio frequency band, should make us think twice about whether we understand the physics.