Mayajima Labs - Saboten L Stereo MC Phono Cartridge

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Lightly used Saboten L MC (Moving-Coil) cartridge from legendary Japanese maker Mayajima.

Saboten is Japanese for... Cactus! See the below Stereophile review for more details.

$4875 MSRP

From Stereophile by Art Dudley:
Listening #186: Miyajima Saboten L phono cartridge
The Saboten L is a low-compliance version of the Saboten cartridge that Herb Reichert wrote about in the April 2018 Stereophile. It's a low-output moving-coil (MC) design that uses Miyajima Lab's unique Cross Ring motor, whose fulcrum of movement is at the precise center of its coil former—an arrangement said to do a better job of preserving dynamic contrasts, compared to traditional motor designs in which the fulcrum point is both vague and comparatively distant from the coils. The Cross Ring motor also lacks the taut suspension wire found in almost all MC designs, and that some think resonates in ways unkind to the output signal.

The Saboten L is built into a prettily rounded body machined from a thick chunk of Cameroonian ebony. More exotic still is the cartridge's calling card: its cactus-spine cantilever. (Saboten is the Japanese word for cactus.) A line-contact stylus is fixed to a short, tubular endpiece of aluminum, itself cemented to the end of the cactus spine. As Noriyuki Miyajima explained with diagrams forwarded to me via e-mail, this endpiece is angled to perfectly align the contact point of stylus tip and record groove with the axial center of the cantilever and coil former: mechanical linearity taken to a laudable extreme.

In a nutshell, this beautiful-sounding product embodies everything that's special about this brand. When it comes to the performance characteristics that matter most to me, I don't believe I've heard another standard-mount cartridge as effective as Miyajima Laboratory's Saboten L.

Saboten L
Saboten L selected carefully from a bit big beautiful cactus spine.  The tip of the cactus cantilever ties a short aluminum cantilever of 0.6 millimeters in diameter and attaches the pure diamond needle of the line contact.

It is a clear sound and expresses a delicate sound.  It does not give a useless sound.It is hard to handle Saboten L for low compliance very much.  I thought about a plan change first, but decided to just make it.

I thought it to be the nearest from an original sound. 
I feel the good tone of the musical instrument and feel clear distance between a sound and sounds.  A start and force and the low tone speed are the best.

It is hard to handle this cartridge most in Miyajima-lab, but I want to certainly recommend it to a user possessing a large audio system.  You can enjoy real music by Saboten L.  The Cameroonian ebony body is hard and is heavy.  A black body has some white spots.  It is hard to look with a photograph, but is a beautiful spot.

Specifications
Maker:
Miyajima-Laboratory

Product name:
Stereo cartridge Saboten L　

Impedance:
About 16 ohms
(About 0.23mV output)　

Frequency range (-3dB):
20 Hz to 32 kHz

Tracking force:
3.0 g

Stylus Shape:
nude Line Contact diamond stylus　

Compliance (10Hz):
Around 8×10-6cm/dyne

Appropriate temperature:
20-30 Celsius (most suitable 25 C)
68-86 Fahrenheit (most suitable 77 F)

Weight:
About 9.5g

Body:
Cameroon ebony