What innovative, unconventional cartridge designs can you recommend?

@richardbrand ha! Never saw that Johnnie Walker Blue Elusive Umami anywhere! 
I’m more of a bourbon guy myself. In scotch I prefer single malt from Islay - Lagavulin, Lafroaig, Ardbeg. I don’t find Johnnie Blue to be all that great especially for $250-$350 (for this umami edition) range. 

Here in the US the Hana Umami Blue is $2,500. And DS003 is $2,750. That’s two bottles of excellent bourbon AND a bottle of Lagavulin! Hehehe 

Hana Blue will most likely have a slightly different sonic perspective than DS003. By no means I dislike a clean delivery. As a matter of fact my Hana ML paired with the Whest phono stage is by no means warm sounding. I’m expecting the Blue to walk that fine line but slightly more careful than the DS003, as the review pointed out. 

@audphile1 

Lagavulin for me, but must be at least 16 years old.  They blend it into the more expensive Johnnie Walkers which is as criminal in my book as adding ice!

My partner bought me a 16-yo Lagavulin, but dropped the bottle getting out of the car.  It was such a tragedy, the shop replaced it free-of-charge.  I’m still smelling the tarmac.

’Sources’ tell me that the further you are from Scotland, the cheaper scotch becomes.  OK, it was the scotch shop at Heathrow Airport telling me I would be better off buying it on landing in Sydney, but not a bad rule-of-thumb

Thank you for explaining that @richardbrand 

So older DS models are the ones that needed the extra wires?

RB, We were, or at least I was, comparing the optical cartridge to an electromagnetic cartridge, where the output is inherently balanced when you take the positive and negative phases of the signal from opposite ends of the coil, OR you choose to ground one side and run it single-ended.  Since there is no coil in an optical cartridge and since diodes are one way conductors, I suspect you would need two diodes per channel or a total of four for stereo output of an optical cartridge that would work in balanced mode. That would add weight to the cartridge body as well as complication in aligning two diodes to generate a balanced signal.  But I could be entirely wrong. It's an interesting question.

In electronic components, you can use bipolar transistors or dual section triodes as active devices to implement a balanced circuit, so in a sense you don't need twice as many parts as in SE operation. 

What's that hyperexpensive single malt scotch that comes from Oz or NZ?  Is it "Smuggler's Gold"?  I have a dear friend in Melbourne who is a connoisseur.

@richardbrand yep Lagavulin 16 

I find airport duty free shops overpriced for the most part. However I stumbled upon a huge bargain one time on a bottle of Glenfiddich 21 which I happen to like a lot as well. 
 

That was very kind of the shop to replace the bottle. You must be regular ;)