More than 30 years ago in my LUXMAN days, having planned the MC-115C phono cartridge and asked late Mr. Sugano the founder of the Koetsu to produce it on our behalf, but he was already quite old at that time and the product did not come out for a long time. Eventually a young engineer was one year apprenticed to him to be taught all the know-how, but the project could not show progress. Then later suddenly, to our pleasant surprise, the cartridges started to be delivered,, but it was found later that the man-behind-the-scenes named Mr. Y. Matsudaira made all the jobs. Dedicated to R & D of cartridge & phono-reproduction for more than 20 years at various firms, e.g., Tokyo Sound, Spex, Entre, etc., at that time he was already an expert/craftman with full knowledge and experience.
After long time, I happened to see him in Las Vegas, At that time he was working at Audio Craft, and I recommended him to market their products in USA & Europe, playing all the intermediary roles. In this process, I came to possess all of his products, thus knowing both of the merits and demerits, and gave him the necessary advices.
In 2004 he got independent and formed the My Sonic Lab. At that time he has already procured a special core material for cartridge. For a few decades in phono cartridge no progress has been marked:: Selection and employment of various materials have been attempted by many manufac- turers, e.g., neodynium/palladium for magnet, gold/silver of high purity for wires, and aluminium/ sapphire for cantilever, to name a few. But all are far from the "High Output & LowImpedance".,- (Difficult to solve, indeed: To obtain high output, you may increase the winding turns of coil, but this automatically increases the inner impedance as well.) After all, he introduced his own cartridge with the dream high-µ core material.
For a long time I have auditioned this cartridge, and finally consulted with him about the possible design of what yields the very sounds I've been long seeking.. To provide the dynamic sensations indispensable to reproduction of discs, I made a proposal to apply wire of a little bigger gauge with a couple more winds employing the aluminium or boron for the cantilever. The reason for this proposal is: I thought utilising his epoch-making core material an ideal design would be realised in terms of the wire material, its gauge, and the number of the winding turns, thus making it possible to achieve the ultimate target - High Output & Low Impedance. The result was much more than expected.
The antinomic theme - High Output and Low Impedance - was now solved and made compatible thanks to the extraordinary high-µ core, which makes it possible to enjoy an unparalleled sonic reproduction offering next-to-none musicality without somehow maculate or opaque feelings inherent in conventional MC cartridges and quick response to the signal source with instant attack & phase-out.
A. Miura