MY SONIC LAB Cartridges

Matsudaira San’s designs definitely fall in the ’neutral’ camp, for whatever that term is worth. This often comes together with extreme detail retrieval, but the emphasis - if any - with MSL cartridges seems more on micro and macro dynamics than details for their own sake. This may be the reason these cartridges are usually described as being very lively, but sometimes also as being somewhat ’uneventful’: nothing sticks out, nothing draws attention to itself. In other words - uh - neutral.

You should disregard the ’observation’ about aluminum being an unworthy material for a top cartridge. The phrase ’just because’ in the comment says it all. Aluminum and boron clearly have different sonic attributes and generally speaking boron emphasizes detail retrieval more than aluminum. But this doesn’t mean one is superior over the other. Matsudaira San acknowledges the distinction but refuses to take sides and provides his customers with a choice, as mentioned. So If ’hyper detail’ is not your thing you’re probably better off choosing the aluminum cantilever, which in this case is ironically called Hyper Eminent.....

@dover have you made any direct comparisons between MSL cartridges and the work Matsudaira San has done for other brands like Airtight, TechDas, Haniwa, Accuphase and others?
The body materials, components and specs are all more or less the same, so it would be interesting if there's a difference between his own brand and the OEM work for others. Perhaps there's a certain amount of tailoring the sound to the requirements of that particular brand?

@dover this voicing to specific requirements for these brands is what I had suspected as well. Then again I seem to remember one poster here suggested that AirTight doesn’t even bother to offer their cartridges for sale in Japan and leaves the home market to MSL. This suggests that any sonic differences would be negligable.

I recently had a good deal on a dealer demo Accuphase AC-6, which is another variation on the MSL theme. It has the impedance of Hyper Eminent (1.8 ohm), combined with the boron cantilever and output level (0.4 mV) of Ultra Eminent. This might suggests that sonically it sits somewhere between those two, but having heard neither of the MSL’s this is just speculation.

I like to think the AC-6 combines the best of both ’worlds’. Just kiddin’ of course, but it’s definitely a highly ’neutral’ (or ’balanced’ if you prefer) cartridge with an incredibly dynamic presentation. They do sell the AC-6 in Japan, perhaps because Accuphase as a more mainstream brand has an attraction to ’one brand’ customers, unlike an amplifier specialist like Airtight.