Analog Corner

In the Who's "Bargain," Keith Moon stomps all over his bass drum, hitting insistent eighth-notes that the Proteus D and some other cartridges fully deliver, producing a head-snapping effect the CAR-60 misses. Once my needle drops are posted, you'll be able to judge for yourself.

Miyajima Laboratory Madake Snakewood phono cartridge
In the December 2014 installment of this column, I reviewed Miyajima Laboratory's unusual Madake cartridge ($5895, footnote 3); later, I bought it. The Madake's cantilever is made of a particular strain of bamboo (madake in Japanese) said to grow only on the mountains surrounding Kyoto. I hear your bullshit detectors going off. I'm just passing it on (but I have no doubt it's true). Essentially, the Madake is a Miyajima Kansui fitted with a bamboo cantilever.

But the Madake's cantilever is not made entirely of madake; rather, it's a bamboo shaft fitted inside an aluminum ferrule and to which is attached a Shibata stylus. The Madake's motor is a cross-ring design unique to Miyajima cartridges (they all have it), in which the cantilever's fulcrum is centered within the coil former (footnote 4).

Like all Miyajimas, the generator is housed in a curvaceous body, this one made of Snakewood instead of the standard Madake's African Blackwood. Snakewood (Brosimum guianense) is extremely dense and quickly blunts a cutting blade; it's also brittle, and easily splinters. According to Robin Wyatt of Robyatt Audio, Miyajima's US importer, machining snakewood is so difficult, and the failure rate is so high, that it takes months to produce a single usable body. This is why the Madake Snakewood costs $7500—about $1600 more than the standard Madake.

Like the standard Madake and the Kansui, the Madake Snakewood weighs 9.7gm, has an output of 0.23mV, an internal impedance of 16 ohms, and a low compliance of 9×10^–6cm/dyne. Its severe, detail-grabbing Shibata stylus sounded best with a VTF of 2.5gm, and with its stylus rake angle (SRA) set to approximately 92°.

Miyajima cartridges require long screws that pass through the cartridge body and are secured with brass nuts. I used to think the screw heads had to be at the bottom of the cartridge and the nuts secured to the headshell, but it works more easily the other way around. Still, securing these is more difficult with Miyajima cartridges, and even more so with the Madake Snakewood: Care must be taken not to overtighten the bolts, lest you shatter the body—not my idea of a smashing good time!

In Miyajima's video you can see that centering the cantilever's fulcrum within the coil former should produce a fast, certain response. For some reason, probably by design, the Shilabe and other models in the line produce sonic signatures that I've described as having "understated but not dull" top ends and a "meaty" midrange. Those qualities appeal to many, but they're probably inappropriate for a reviewer's system, where the goal is greater neutrality.

The original Madake shattered (oops!) this generalization about Miyajima's house sound by having a faster, more neutral sound with a very well-extended top end; a less generous and, in my opinion, more neutral midrange; and a faster, cleaner bottom end. As I wrote of the original Madake in my December 2014 column, it produced the sizzle of more analytical cartridges and the steak of some warmer, richer-sounding cartridges. This made the Madake something I couldn't get enough of—as I wrote, "I couldn't stop listening to it." Which is why I bought it.

The Snakewood is a meth-infused Madake. As good as the Madake is, the Snakewood was faster, leaner, cleaner, and a definite notch more transparent, without losing any of the Madake's coherent appeal. However, the Snakewood had neither the Kuzma CAR-50's or CAR-60's generous spatiality or refined smoothness, nor the Transfiguration Proteus or Proteus D's slam, image specificity, or—especially—the last two cartridges' (or the Lyra Atlas's) wide dynamic contrasts.

However, the Madake Snakewood's overall organization of space, harmonic and textural generosity, wide and smooth bandwidth, and snappy bottom-to-top transient response free of hyper-edged detail, make it a cartridge that got out of the way and left me thinking not about the cartridge but the music. Unlike cartridges that are better suited to one musical genre than others, the Madake Snakewood delivered well with every kind of music.

The supply of snakewood is apparently limited; my appreciation for this cartridge is not.

TechDAS TDC01 Ti phono cartridge
The top of the TechDAS cartridge line (footnote 5), the TDC01 Ti, has a gleaming, egg-shaped housing and a complex mounting plate, both parts machined from titanium and subjected to what TechDAS calls "special processed hard surface treatment." At 17gm, the TDC01 Ti, like Kuzma's CAR models, is on the heavy side. It costs $16,000, for which you also get a set of lead wires of 99.999999%-pure copper, a pair of nonmagnetic tweezers and a screwdriver, titanium mounting screws, and a digital stylus-force gauge.

Built to TechDAS's design specifications by My Sonic Lab's Yoshio Matsudaira—he has done the same for Air Tight, Haniwa, and others—the TDC01 Ti combines an unusually low internal impedance of 1.4 ohms with an output of 0.45mV—unusually high for such a low impedance. Despite that low impedance, TechDAS recommends loading the TDC01 Ti with something between 100 and 200 ohms. A semi-line-contact stylus with a tip of familiar proportions (3 by 30µm) is affixed to a boron cantilever.

Cartridges of ultra-low internal impedance usually have few turns of coil wire and/or nonferrous coil formers. In the TDC01 Ti, the former is probably made of hi-mu SH-uX metal, which is used in the relatively high-output, low-internal-impedance, low-inductance cartridges built by Matsudaira for Haniwa—though the Haniwa's internal impedance is even lower: 0.8 ohm. For that cartridge, the recommended load is but 8 ohms, including the resistance of the phono cable. Such a load is impossible with most phono preamps, which is why Haniwa makes its own—a review of their latest is in the works.

Fewer coil turns and/or nonferrous formers usually produce very little output. TechDAS doesn't specify how the TDC01 Ti manages to produce 0.45mV with so low an internal impedance, but it must have something to do with powerful neodymium magnets used in a high-efficiency circuit. Much of the TDC01 Ti's 17gm mass must be the magnets.

As with the Haniwa, getting the most from the TDC01 Ti requires a very low loading value—so TechDAS's recommendation of 100–200 ohms surprised me. I avoided the issue entirely by running the cartridge into one of the CH Precision P1/X1 current amplification inputs, which loves to see low internal resistance and inductance.

I evaluated the TDC01 Ti by installing it in the Graham Engineering Phantom III and Swedish Analog Technologies tonearms, alternating between the CH Precision P1/X1 phono preamplifier and an Ypsilon Electronics combo of VPS-100 Silver Edition phono preamplifier and MC-16L step-up transformer.

I measured the review sample. The TDC01 Ti met its specified channel balance of 0.5dB (1kHz) and its channel separation of more than 30dB (1kHz). I achieved an SRA of 92° with the tonearm almost parallel with the record surface, which is as it should be for a cartridge costing $16k. Build quality, too, was as high as you'd expect for that kind of money.

The sound of the TDC01 Ti combined the satiny top-end sheen for which Matsudaira's cartridges are famous, regardless of brand, with an authoritarian dynamic slam and impressive transparency for which the line is somewhat less known. The TechDAS also produced a blend of the best of the Kuzma CAR-60 and the Transfiguration Proteus and Proteus D. Soundstages were deep and wide where appropriate, and the transparency was similar to what the CARs delivered—but the TDC01 Ti also produced Proteus-like overall dynamic "slam" along with transient sharpness on the bottom and in the mids. On top, though, there was more of the sheen of Matsudaira's house sound—a pleasing smoothness that made strings sing, revealed buttery-rich textures in women's voices, and produced well-burnished brasses.

Still, I'd describe the TechDAS TDC01 Ti's super-refined reproduction of transients as somewhat on the polite side overall, and better suited to jazz and classical than to harder-edged rock, soul, and blues. Of course, one person's "polite" is another's "just right," and what I call "detail" and "transient clarity" might be your "rips-your-head-off edgy." We can all get along!

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Footnote 3: Miyajima Laboratory/Otono-Edison,1-45-111, Katae 5-chome, Jounan-ku, Fufuoka 814-0142, Japan. Web: www.miyajima-lab.com. US distributor: Robyatt Audio, Web: www.robyattaudio.com

Footnote 4: For an animation that usefully explains the cross-ring motor and its benefits without getting tripped up in the clumsy Japanese/English translations that hobble the rest of the website, and especially the instructions accompanying the Madake, see this webpage.

Footnote 5: TechDAS, Stella Inc., 51-10 Nakamarucho, Itabashi-ku, Tokyo 173-0026, Japan. US distributor: Graham Engineering, 25M Olympia Avenue, Woburn, MA 01801. Tel: (781) 932-8777. Fax: (781) 932-8782. Web: www.graham-engineering.com