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Budget Product of the Year 2025 – Stereophile
Golden Ear Award - The Absolute Sound Magazine
Recommended Component 2025 – Stereophile
Editors' Choice Award 2024 – The Absolute Sound Magazine
Five Hearts - Hi-Fi Pig Magazine
New S Series Upgrade Surpasses All Expectations
Surpassing expectations, the MK II upgrade to Hana's globally bestselling "S" moving coil cartridges enhances both their musical performance and value. Choose the high output SH MK II or the low output SL MK II model.
For the new MK II series, master cartridge designer Masao Okada implements a Nude Diamond Shibata stylus featuring a new tapered Aluminum cantilever with increased rigidity, resulting in a remarkable improvement transferring groove modulation from vinyl record to the cartridge generator. The S MK II cartridges feature higher specified parts, advanced materials, and unique technical processes from Hana’ s higher-priced elite cartridge models, furthering the Hana "brilliant and gorgeous" sound.
Award-Winning Performance
The Absolute Sound magazine honored the Hana SL with an Editors' Choice Award for 2024.
"In a sea of $10,000-ish super cartridges, what’s a vinyl-playing audiophile with discriminating tastes to do? For that matter, what’s a sub-$999 budgeted audiophile to do? The $600 Hana SL is the gem of the Excel lineup and can easily fit any ’table/’arm combo that will accommodate a 0.5mV output. With the Hana SL, the user can also rest assured the cartridge will support the next ’table/’arm upgrade. It represents what any more costly cartridge should offer as a bare minimum—and plenty more."
The Absolute Sound magazine went on to give the Hana a Golden Ear Award in November 2025, reporting, "The Hana SL MK II is a cartridge with admirable harmonic richness, very good transparency to the recorded music, and excellent soundstage depth when the music contains such information. Extended listening over the evaluation period completely solidified these initial observations."
It also won a Budget Product of the Year Award for 2025 from Stereophile. "Herb Reichert's experience with 80% nickel transformers suggests that adding nickel to iron intensifies its response to magnetic fields, thereby increasing its responsiveness to small-signal stimulations. In audio systems, 'alnico makes tones appear denser and more saturated tone-color–wise. More noticeably, it adds vitality and polish,' he wrote."
"Recommended Component" Honors
Stereophile honored the Hana SL MKII by awarding it the magazine's coveted Recommend Component status for 2025.
"HR [Herb Reichert] found that Hana's original SL was an easy-flowing cartridge with a natural demeanor that did not sacrifice focus or musical form when presenting complex recordings, but boogie slam and jump factor were not its strong points. The SL MK II's heavier body, lower impedance coils, and tapered-tube cantilever addressed these deficiencies. The MK II sounded noticeably speedier, clearer, harder hitting, and more alpha than the original SL, concluded HR."
"A New Overachiever Overachieves More!"
In a follow-up review, The Absolute Sound magazine had even more positives to share about the Hana SL.
"A new overachiever overachieves more!" raves Andre Jenning in the April 2025 issue. "The Hana SL MK II becomes the new low-cost overachiever, outdoing nearly everything the cartridge it replaces did so well."
"The SL MK II captured the complex harmonics from multiple strings with such ease and flow that I ended up listening to the entire 3-LP set."
"A Quantum Leap in Performance"
"In every aspect, the Hana SL MK II outperforms the original SL, offering a larger soundstage, better macro and micro dynamics, more openness on the top end, retrieval of more information, and better separation of instruments," reports Ken Redmond, trackingangle.com, September 26, 2024.
"The new Hana SL MK II is a quantum leap in performance in every aspect of sound. This is a no-brainer recommendation for your consideration in this price range."
"Effortless, Driving, Foot-Tapping Sound"
"I have only used the cartridge for a few hours so it is not yet run in, but I am already enjoying the sound very much," observes DVinylFan, vinylengine.com, October 24, 2024. "I was immediately struck by the extremely low surface noise, the rich tone, the clarity of and space around vocals, and a well-rendered soundstage. I find it to have a somewhat effortless, driving, foot-tapping sound."
S Series MK II Innovations
Hana S Series MK II cartridges use a new tapered aluminum cantilever with higher rigidity and effective mass reduction at the stylus tip. The result is enhanced clarity and musical transfer from vinyl record to cartridge generator.
Cryogenic treatment of critical parts includes the yoke, pole pieces, and gold terminal pins, creating a more natural sound.
The improved, non-resonant body shape, modeled after the Hana M series, is damped with a matte Soft Feel Black elastomeric resin paint, and it also features a brass cap with threaded cartridge mounting.
"Punches Well Above Its Weight Division"
"All things being equal, the Hana is the perfect candidate for anyone with a mid to upper mid level turntable and arm combination who is on the hunt for a value-for-money moving coil cartridge," observes Peter Famiiari, stereonet.com, March 24, 2017. "With a performance close enough to challenge cartridges priced to $1500, the Hana SL punches well above its weight division and represents good value for money, and as such comes warmly recommended."
"The bottom end is very solid, controlled, and digs deep. The midrange is warm and has depth and the top end is smooth, accurate and open, and tracks extremely well," notes reviewer ehoove, audiokarma.org, September 6, 2020. "Sound stage is wide and precise. This is a wonderful cartridge that punches above its price."
Expanded Compatibility
The heavier S Series MK II cartridges offer better coupling with expanded compatibility to a wider range of tonearms, improving bass and dynamics.
New SL MK II Generator
The SL MK II generator, as found in the Umami Blue and ML, incorporates an Alinco magnet with a cross-coil using less windings of high purity 30 micron copper wire. This improves signal to noise, reduces moving mass for higher resolution and trackability, and optimizes performance for a broader range of phono stages.
Five Hearts from Hi-Fi Pig
Hi-Fi Pig Magazine awarded the SL MK II its top rating of Five Hearts, "The dynamic and yet relatively refined nature of this cartridge make it a delight to listen to. On genres that demand it, the SL MKII has enough refinement to make it a class act, but on the likes of techno it manages to get across a good degree of the grit and distortion this genre has, but without sounding brash or uncouth."
"Great sound-staging and imaging," concludes reviewer Stuart Smith. "A cartridge for those who just want to get on with listening to their music without over-obsessing about everything."
Chose Low Output or High Output Versions
The SL cartridge is the low output version, while the SH is the high output version. SL has an output voltage of 0.5mV, and the SH has an output voltage of 2.0mV.
Hana cartridges use the best materials, including alnico magnets, cross-shaped armatures, and proprietary manufacturing processes. Hana has excelled at creating MC cartridges noted worldwide for their sound and value, which retain their 'musical magic' regardless of their phono stage pairing.
"Blown Away"
"I am blown away by the Hana line of cartridges, especially the SL; if you're looking to spend $750 dollars for a cartridge that will treat your records well and let you hear what they really sound like, you'd be hard pressed to do better for the money," reports Tom Gibbs, positivefeedback.com.
"You could do better, but not a lot better and only with much greater outlay, and get it wrong and you could spend thousands and get nowhere close," observes Geoff Husband, tnt-audio.com, June 2016.
"I'm only about 20 hours in, but this cart is something special and is having the biggest impact on sound reproduction that I can recall in recent memory. It's soundstage both in depth and width is phenomenal and it truly does make the speakers disappear on most LPs," raves Mike from NYC, forums.stevehoffman.tv, September 17, 2017.
