2. analog
  3. 190244-1662

Yamamoto HSA-01 headshell/head amp

During my recent trip to Tokyo, I happened upon this gadget. It is a headshell with a built-in gain stage that boosts signal voltage in the ratio 1:14. Apparently this is achieved via a tiny op amp and battery power, both seated in the base of the headshell, behind the phono cartridge mounting area. The beauty of the idea is you can thus boost the signal of a very low output LOMC right at its source, before it has had to travel over connectors, tonearm wires, more connectors, etc, to reach the first stage of gain, be that a head amp, SUT, or high gain phono stage. The op amp is designed to drive a 47K ohm input resistance and is thus suitable for MM stages or a low gain MC stage in which the load is 47K ohms. The net weight is only 12.5g, making it somewhat compatible with even high compliance very low output cartridges. I wonder if anyone has experimented with this gadget. I am about to do so myself.

lewm

Showing 2 responses by dover

dover
2,279 posts
 

I heard a fet based front end mounted at the headshell end designed and built by Peter Suchy in the mid 80's at CES. Only difference was that he ran an external power supply with wires running through the arm tube. I never saw this go into production though.

In fact in Japan there have been a number of these head shell based gain stages through the years. This one is one of the tidiest implementations I've seen.

If they had mounted it on top of the head shell there would have been no cartridge limitations.

Of course in the old days Ortofon had mini SUT's built into their low output cartridges in their integrated head shell with some models.

 

 

dover
2,279 posts
 

SPU - Stereo Pick Up.

STEP 1 - Turn on computer

STEP 2 - Click on G O O G LE 

STEP 3 - key in SPU C A R T R I D G E 

STEP 4 - hit the E N T E R button

Takes about 4 - 5 seconds

More to discover