Otono-Edison MC cartridges

This is what Miyajima-San said about those two models:
  技と調は特性より聴感上を重視したカートリッジです。よって音のスピード感、透明感は他を凌ぎます 

"The Technique (*Miyajima Waza) and Tone (*Miyajima Shilabe) are cartridges that emphasize hearing rather than characteristics. Therefore, the sense of speed and transparency of the sound surpasses others." 

And yes, the sound presentation with Edison Standard is very pleasant! 

The Shilabe's documentation is unintentionally humorous, but were I buying a cartridge at this price point, I wouldn't be amused. The cartridge pins aren't marked, but the one-sheet enclosed in the package identifies which is which, advising, "Please be connected to a color." I concur! 

"This Mature is devised to be able to play a sound of LP record faithfully," the instructions inform, along with "Please talk without adding a hand when a trouble happened."

What the instructions don't inform you of is the Shilabe's low output of 0.23mV. I had to ask, though I later found it on the company's website. The internal impedance is listed as about 16 ohms. 

The loading instructions include: "A transformer and the amplifier for MC please use the thingthat [sic] it is possible for reproduction of the broadband if possible to make use of a good point of 'Mature' enough. Use is possible with low or high both with a commercial transformer. When there is a changeover switch, please choose him towards preference." Got that?

AND INTERESTING PART:

But aside from its high resolution, the Shilabe had among the fastest, cleanest transient response of any cartridge I've heard at any price. Metal sounds like metal, yet there was nothing intrinsically bright about the Shilabe's sound, which was full-bodied, deep, extremely well defined, and as fast on bottom as on top. The midrange was full but not excessively so, resulting in superbly coherent transient and harmonic performance from top to bottom. The Shilabe had the slam and fullness preferred by moving-magnet devotees, but with the resolution and speed of a good moving-coil.

Compared with the Shelter 7000 and Shun Mook Signature cartridges I review this month, the Shilabe easily sounded the most natural and convincing... 

The Miyajima Shilabe is an unusually designed and unusually fine-sounding cartridge, but its 0.23mV output means that it must be paired with a quiet, high-quality phono preamplifier. If you have one, and you're more interested in correct harmonic structure and tonal color than in imaging and soundstaging, the Shilabe is well worth considering. 

- Michael Fremer

ART DUDLEY'S PART HERE (R.I.P.):

New brand called Miyajima. Or Edison. Or Otono. Nobody knew for sure.

Mikey was right: I've now spent a few weeks with a borrowed Miyajima Shilabe, and I can recommend it, heartily and confidently, to any music lover who wants to hear from his stereo records the sort of body and presence that I and a few other mono nuts have been nattering on about, and yet who isn't willing to give up anything in the way of spatial competence, timbral neutrality, or groove noiselessness.

Noriyuki Miyajima's calling card is his cross-ring motor, which differs from other designs in four significant ways. First, the fulcrum of the cantilever's movement is at the precise center of the coil former. Thus, every deflection of the cantilever creates a precise and instantaneous signal induction. (In almost every other moving-coil motor design, the fulcrum is fore or aft of the coils, a mechanical compromise that results in an electrical nonlinearity.) Second, the left- and right-channel coils are wound in a pattern of overlapping ellipses not unlike the crossing rings in a gyroscope (which is why, I guess, it's called a cross-ring motor). Third, the former on which those coils are wound is nonmetallic. Fourth, the coil former is snugged into place from behind, with a sort of pointed axle, rather than being pulled into place from behind with a taut—and notoriously resonant—bit of steel wire. 

Noriyuki Miyajima recommends using this low-output cartridge with a step-up transformer, as opposed to an active gain stage; I heartily agree, and happily obliged.

If you've assembled a playback system around one or more vintage components, hoping for at least some of those same qualities that I enjoy, the vast majority of modern phono cartridges will sound fraudulent. You'll get the same old zizzy, airy, silvery sound you had before: monochromatic outlines with nothing colored in. You'll have wasted your money and some of your time on Earth, just to find yourself going back to high-end hell through a different door—one with an antique knob.

In the context of my system and my tastes, the Miyajima Shilabe is the next best thing to a dedicated pickup head, and is miles above anything else I've heard. It's that simple

-Art Dudley

And this is my "mature" model called "standard" wood, scroll down-  there are pictures.