What innovative, unconventional cartridge designs can you recommend?

Sooner or later, to continue this discussion sensibly, you are going to have to get your hands on an optical cartridge plus Equalizer, and I am going to have to get a Moving Coil.  Who will be going backwards?
 

@richardbrand I pulled the trigger on Umami Blue. While the DS003 is an amazing cartridge based on what I’ve read so far, going up the Hana line made more sense for me at this point, especially after what I heard over the weekend in my friend’s system with his upgrade from ML to Umami Blue. 
So to answer your question, I don’t think either of us would be going backwards. 

@audphile1 

Congratulations on your new purchase!

I looked up a review and found The Hana Umami Blue Moving Coil Cartridge Review - The Absolute Sound. In it Tom Martin says

I do have a cartridge that’s effectively in between the Umami Blue and the Umami Red in price. And I think that provides an interesting comparison, and honestly, if you can, a comparison that you ought to make. That comparison is with the DS Audio 003 cartridge

His conclusion, I think, is that the Umami Blue is one notch more analogue in quality, while the DS003 is one notch more analytical.

So we will both be happy (except that I have a balanced input just waiting for an MC and no spare cash)

Cheers

Thank you @richardbrand ! I’m very excited…can’t wait. 
Saw that review and it helped with the decision but hearing the Blue sealed the deal. 
This will be my 4th Hana cartridge counting the 2 MLs I had few years apart  

I will post my thoughts after I install it. Should be arriving some tine next week. 

@lewm 

the amount of capacitance "needed" to smoothe out rectified AC voltage into DC voltage is inversely proportional to the final DC voltage that is delivered to the circuit

You are strictly correct, you did not post a formula in full. I took what you wrote to be the same thing as a formula, where the constant of proportionality is not specified.

Unfortunately, it is far from the full story because the more capacitance you add for a given final voltage, the lower the ripple.

Thinking about reducing ripple, I wondered about using a Class A amplifier being fed a constant signal.  The output should be constant voltage, whatever the load.  An over-the-top-solution maybe, but then I remembered that Wilson Benesch use three Class A amplifiers, one for each phase, to power their megabuck direct drive turntable.

@audphile1 

The Hana should have one advantage - straight lines for setting it up!

The only flat surfaces on the DS003 are the top and the back, so there is really only one decent straight line, which makes azimuth and zenith hard to set mechanically 

Even the front LED has curved sides and the whole thing curves under like the prow of a boat