The Mutech RM Kanda Hyabusa

Thanks for your informative response.

Since this is your thread, I guess it's OK to go off-topic.  Do you mean to say the Lino C permits RIAA correction in the digital domain?  Does it have a digital RIAA built in?  That would involve, of course, ADA conversions, which I don't fancy myself.

Which current drive phono stage do you plan to buy?
I am hardly in a position to argue you should by a Terminator tonearm.  I decided long ago that no matter how great linear tracking tonearms might be, I don't want to bother with the pumps, filters, noise, etc, associated with their use.  If I did decide to put up with it, I would indeed place the Terminator at the top of my list for its brilliant design and modest cost.  That lack of pumps and other paraphernalia is to me what makes the Schroeder LT and maybe the Reed most tempting.  Anyway, I would be interested to learn how it goes with whatever current drive phono you select.  I have long been hooked on the BMC MCCI, as an idea.

Michael Fremer is a perspicacious listener and good reporter, but on technical terms, he is often weak.  In the case where he criticized at least one linear tracker for high lateral effective mass, I believe he was parroting some other guru.  You can find "experts" on both sides of that question, and I am not saying I know better than any of them, but merely that the proof has to be in the pudding, for linear trackers one by one.  Sure, the Reed and the Schroeder are intriguing in terms of addressing that one issue, but they have other possible issues related to bearing friction etc.  I agree with you about inserting parameters into the equation for resonant frequency; we are usually kidding ourselves that we know the values of M and C with any degree of accuracy, for that tonearm and that cartridge we are using at that moment.

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.

"<10 ohms", makes more sense to me, especially if input Z is <1 ohm.  You'd be surprised to find that most of the phono stages that claim current drive operation actually have much higher input Z, which means they cannot really operate fully on current drive with some of the cartridges that have very low internal resistance.

What they say suggests that the input impedance of the Channel D L20 (odd name for a very expensive phono stage) must be less than 25 ohms, but to work well iin current mode with cartridges like the Mustek or the Haniwa would require a phono input impedance of less than 1 ohm.  The field of choice is quite narrow at that specification, but like I said, these cartridges can drive in voltage mode, providing there is enough gain available.  Same old problem.  Didn't mean to side track your discussion.  One of these days I will have to buy a current drive phono stage to satisfy my own fascination with the idea.

The current drive depends not only on the internal resistance of the cartridge but also on the input impedance of the phono stage. If you investigate, the phono stages said to be of that type actually have quite a wide range of input impedances among them. So, if your cartridge has a 10 ohm internal impedance and your phono stage has an input Impedance of 10 ohms or greater, then the drive will tend toward voltage rather than current. It’s really tricky to figure this out. You need to know for sure the specifications of each component for good matching. Also as a result, if you have a very low internal resistance cartridge like the Haniwa or the mutek , and you use a phono stage with a 10 or 12 ohm input impedance, which is quite common for so-called current drive phono stages, then that cartridge will be driving that phono stage in voltage mode mostly. This is not to say that a combination like that would not sound good. It might sound great.

The Mutech, like the aforementioned Haniwa cartridge, ought to be auditioned using a current-driven phono stage. I bet the results would be staggering with a good example of that type of phono circuit.  Fremer used the BMC MCCI when he reviewed the Haniwa in 2014.  He liked it better than the Haniwa phono stage, using their cartridge.

I don’t know which Transfiguration cartridge this might be comparable to, but the very low internal resistance with the relatively high output (although still in the low output category) reminds me of another Japanese cartridge that has been on the market for a few years. The company name or the cartridge model name begins with "H", I think, and is not "Hana". The one I have in mind has an internal resistance around 1 ohm and an output of about 0.3 to 0.4mV. It got good reviews but is rather faded from the scene these days. I’m searching for the identity but no luck so far.

Edit: Found it! The Haniwa HCTR-01. This cartridge has rather astounding specs: If I am reading the specs correctly, internal resistance is 0.4 ohms and inductance is 0.3uH (micro-henry). The inductance is 30 to 100 times LESS than a typical LOMC cartridge, which is in turn about 1000X lower than a typical MM cartridge. The Haniwa website does not state the signal output voltage, I think because the cartridge is designed to drive a current-mode phono stage, specifically their own product, the Haniwa HEQA03, which presents an 0.25 ohm phono input impedance!!! Now I realize the Haniwa is totally unique, probably not related to the cartridge you want to discuss. Sorry.For anyone who is interested, here is the web page: https://haniwaaudio.com/products/analog-front-end-system/