This is one of those reviews that has needed a little time to come together. Etsuro Urushi is an elite cartridge line produced by Japan’s Excel Sound Corporation. Excel is probably better known for its Hana range of cartridges, but a large part of its business is manufacturing cartridges for third-party firms. It is one of the world’s most respected cartridge manufacturers. Having already reviewed the Hana Umami Red, I was naturally keen to see how Excel’s more exotic offerings perform. In the UK, where I live, the Etsuro line is distributed by Unique Audio, which is headed up by Mik Bhavnani, who has been involved in high-end audio for 40 years.
Mik’s business premises are located in his home, which is a sort of temple to the gods of audio. In the main listening room, you’ll find three Rockport Technologies System III Sirius turntables. The System III Sirius is widely regarded as the finest turntable ever made. These things weigh a staggering 535 pounds apiece. In the same room sits a Goldmund Reference turntable, multiple Townshend Rock turntables, and scores of unique SME turntables, many with commemorative gold-anodized SME Series V tonearms attached. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find Mik has the Ark of the Covenant in there too!
The Urushi Cobalt Blue cartridge (US$4800, CA$6300, £4250, €4850) sits just above the entry-level Gin‑nezu model (£2850), which is equipped with a boron cantilever, but below the Bordeaux (£7250), which offers a pure sapphire baseplate and a more refined generator design. The range is topped by the flagship Gold (£14,500), which is equipped with a diamond cantilever.
Description
Even at this price point you’d be surprised how many manufacturers ignore the importance of presentation, but not Etsuro. The Urushi Cobalt Blue comes in an attractive engraved solid-wood box inside a blue-parchment sleeve emblazoned with its name and model designation in silver. Inside, the cartridge is mounted to a clear acrylic mounting plate and protected by an excellent plastic stylus cover. Documentation isn’t terribly lavish, comprising a green-paper leaflet with basic specs and a brief overview of the construction. Crucially, there was no measurement printout—I would have liked to see this as proof that my individual cartridge had been measured and found to conform to spec. It wasn’t too long ago that almost any decent cartridge came with an individual test printout, but this is increasingly rare nowadays, which is a shame.
The Cobalt Blue is a beautiful cartridge, thanks in part to its exceptional Urushi lacquer finish. Urushi lacquering is a highly labor-intensive traditional Japanese technique that involves harvesting the sap from mature lacquer trees over ten years old. In its raw, uncured state this sap contains urushiol, the same allergen found in poison ivy. The sap is extracted, processed, applied in layers by hand, and then left to cure. What results is a beautiful protective film that is extremely resilient. The technique has been practiced in Japan for over 9000 years and is regarded as a sacred art. After seeing this cartridge up close for myself, I understand why. The Cobalt Blue looks even more expensive than it is; the cobalt color is delectably rich and glossy. I knew this cartridge was going to look sublime on my blue SME Model 35 turntable, and I wasn’t wrong.
Beneath the lavish Urushi lacquer finish is a body manufactured from ultra-super duralumin A7075, one of the strongest and most rigid aluminum alloys available and more often found in critical structural areas on aircraft. The Cobalt Blue uses a unique 0.4mm sapphire-pipe cantilever design, the only one of its type in the world. Sapphire is a very hard material, and Excel claims this design transmits vibration extremely rapidly, resulting in enhanced clarity and accuracy. The stylus itself is an 80µm microline diamond, while the generator assembly uses samarium-cobalt magnets rather than the more common neodymium type. Neodymium magnets are cheaper to manufacture and typically more powerful; however, samarium-cobalt has exceptional temperature stability and is extremely resistant to demagnetization. Such magnets also contain little to no iron and so don’t suffer from the magnetic distortions intrinsic to iron-based magnets. Samarium-cobalt designs typically produce a warmer and more natural sonic quality compared to neodymium, at the expense of lower output.
The output of the Cobalt Blue is 0.25mV at 1kHz, meaning it falls at the lower end of low-output moving-coil designs, which is typically around 0.4mV; therefore, an especially quiet and high-gain phono stage will be required here. Frequency response is quoted at 15Hz–50kHz, with output balance tolerance within 0.5dB. Specified weight is 8.1g, which means it is a medium-weight cartridge and thus suitable for most high-quality tonearms. Trackability is quoted as an impressive 70µm at 2g tracking force, which implies that this cartridge should be capable of capturing large groove excursions and replaying high-dynamic-range material with ease.
Setup
The cartridge body has tapped holes for the supplied fitting screws, and I installed it in my resident SME Series 35 turntable with Series Vi (improved) resin-composite tonearm. Installation posed no issue, with good sight lines for alignment. I paid careful attention to VTA in particular, as this cartridge—like others with microlinear-profile styli—demands precise VTA for optimal performance. Fortunately, the SME Series Vi offers superlative adjustment of VTA and alignment, and the double line running down its length greatly simplifies such adjustment. I find a clear-acrylic stylus VTA gauge is very useful for this process, but I have on occasion backed up my readings with a laser level.
The Urushi Cobalt Blue has an extremely low internal impedance of 3 ohms at 1kHz, and recommended loading is 25–100 ohms. Not many phono stages go quite that low; my PS Audio Stellar does, although my preferred Trichord Research Dino Mk3 only goes down to 100 ohms. I tried both, but I settled on the Trichord Dino, complete with its “Never Connected” power supply unit, because the Etsuro really came alive with that stage. The rest of the system comprised my Naim Audio NAC 82 preamplifier and NAP 350 monoblock amplifiers driving ATC’s SCM40 floorstanding loudspeakers. I set tracking force to 2g as recommended and antiskate to a fraction less, and I cued up the first record.
Sound
First up was an old favorite: Tanita Tikaram’s debut album Ancient Heart (Reprise 25839‑1). Not only is this an excellent-sounding, natural recording, but it tests many important parameters, including speed, detail, dynamics, transparency, timbre, and the ability to realistically reproduce Tanita’s deep contralto vocals. On the opening track, “Good Tradition,” the way the Cobalt Blue rendered Tanita’s voice was rich and detailed with glorious timbre, presenting her almost holographically in the center of the stage. On “World Outside Your Window,” I was struck instantly by the kick drum, which had significantly more weight and extension than through my resident Lyra Kleos SL cartridge (US$4995, CA$7104, £3095, €3200). This added richness wasn’t at the expense of detail; the Cobalt’s facility with drums and its sheer speed really augmented the bouncing rhythm of the track.
I purchased this slice of vinyl back in 1987 when it was released, and played the hell out of it for decades. Despite receiving a recent clean on the excellent Keith Monks Prodigy Plus record-cleaning machine, it still has its fair share of war wounds. I was truly shocked to discover that the surface noise here was almost nonexistent, with backgrounds frequently as silent as on a CD, even between tracks. The Cobalt Blue is the quietest cartridge I have ever heard.
The Cobalt Blue was off to a flying start with Tanita, but I was curious how it would fare with some jazz. Moanin’ by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers (Blue Note BST‑84003) provided the answer. The opening piano was incredibly tangible in the room and had satisfying weight and scale, while the whole track swung thanks to excellent timing and precision of note shapes. Mounted on a turntable of the SME Model 35’s caliber, the Cobalt Blue demonstrated the ability to deliver real startle factor with drums and percussion. Of course, the Model 35 and Series Vi tonearm excel in this regard. The SME ’table delivers staggering transient speed, with drum thwacks, for example, arriving suddenly from inky-black silence. I attribute this quality to the fact that the Model 35 is world-class at dissipating excess vibrational energy, resulting in zero smearing of notes.
The Cobalt Blue was also extremely capable at tracking and at responding to every tiny nuance of each musical note. In short, everything felt and sounded instantaneous, which is an important element in bringing records a step closer to live music and providing an attendant emotional response. One of the most noticeable characteristics of live musical performance is the way that everything sounds so agile, with each note beautifully crisp and defined, whether it’s a plucked guitar string or a cymbal or snare strike. Even instruments like piano tend to exhibit leading-edge attack in a way that few audio systems seem able to reproduce. But the Etsuro on the SME Model 35 absolutely nailed this. Notes had genuine shape with a real feeling of hammers striking strings. The pace and impetus of the Cobalt Blue was a match for my Lyra cartridge, which is renowned for its agility and speed.
We’ve been suffering through a heat wave in England, with temperatures reaching into the high 30s centigrade, so I turned to Frederick Delius’s In a Summer Garden performed by the Hallé Orchestra under Sir John Barbirolli (EMI ASD2477). This is a gorgeously romantic record with particularly sweet string tones, which were accurately captured and beautifully portrayed by the Cobalt Blue. The whole performance sounded detailed, with nothing inappropriately spotlit, and I wallowed in the lush sound as it spread across the soundstage in a truly room-filling way. This cartridge has an uncanny ability to portray large-scale music in an expansive manner, which of course is how it always seems in a live concert hall. Subtle cues like the size of the hall and the acoustic space were clearly conveyed—a sheer delight!
For something more up-tempo, I moved on to J.J. Cale’s Okie (Shelter Records ISA 5004) and the track “I’ll Be There (If You Ever Want Me).” I was struck by how open and clean Cale’s voice and slide guitar sounded. The rhythm section was exemplary as well. With the Cobalt Blue, Tommy Cogbill’s bass had great warmth and feel and stayed in lockstep with Karl Himmel’s taut drumming. Despite the expert musicianship, I was pleased to hear that the band’s signature loose-playing style was very much in evidence. There’s something just so relaxed and relaxing about Cale’s records, and they tend to be pretty nicely recorded.
If you love Cale, you’ll also love Rockin’ Jimmy and the Brothers of the Night’s 1981 album By the Light of the Moon (Sonet Records 857). This is one of those special records that nobody seems to know about. The band is part of the same Tulsa soft-country boogie-rock scene as Cale, but they only recorded two albums, both of them stunningly produced. How they didn’t end up huge is beyond me. Via the Etsuro, the guitars on “Raging Storm” were simply sublime—full of twang and searingly transparent, so that every string bend was clearly delineated. It never felt as if individual instruments were masking each other; it was easy to follow what every instrument was contributing to the mix, with plenty of space and air around each of them. The bass guitar was ripe and fruity, with the notes’ pitches clearly outlined, while vocals were stellar and utterly present in the room. Finally, the drums had just the right amount of weight and scale, featuring excellent rhythm and timing. Of all the records I played with the Cobalt Blue, this was probably the most enjoyable. That’s not to say that this cartridge favors any single musical style. It’s remarkably agnostic and is equally capable with rock’n’roll, classical, jazz, or even dance.
Daft Punk’s seminal Random Access Memories (Columbia 88883716861) proved just how extraordinary vinyl at this elevated level can sound. “Get Lucky” demonstrated the formidable bass extension of the Urushi Cobalt Blue. Bass lines were beautifully rich and textured, while the rhythm and lead guitar were again nicely delineated in the mix. The soundstage was huge, extending far outside the confines of the loudspeakers. I noted with approval that the staccato electric-guitar jabs had a real sense of pace and attack, while the vocals were smooth, rich, and warm, but possessing plenty of detail. This was vinyl replay at its best. Crucially, when I switched between Tidal streaming on my Naim NDX 2 and the SME/Etsuro combo, I found myself preferring the turntable every time.
I don’t mind admitting I found this surprising, because I had assumed that this was a digital recording, until I learned that this album was made using an unusual hybrid of analog- and digital-recording techniques. The sessions were recorded simultaneously onto Ampex analog tape and into Pro Tools. The duo and mixing engineer Mick Guzauski then listened to both versions and chose the one that sounded best.
The project utilized this best-of-both-worlds method because the music required precise digital editing—much like sampling—but Daft Punk wanted to replicate the warmth and discipline of 1970s analog workflows. The live instruments were captured, mixed, and processed heavily in the analog domain (through a 72-input analog console) before being integrated into the final mix.
Conclusion
The Etsuro Urushi Cobalt Blue is a remarkable groove tracer that gets to the heart and soul of music in a way that might just be superior to any other cartridge I have had at home. It excavates as much detail from the groove as my Lyra Kleos SL, which places it at or near the pinnacle of cartridge design at this level. Its facility for low-level detail retrieval, from brushed triangle to ambient hall cues to the subtle nuance of a player’s technique on guitar or piano, is simply superb. What makes it so extraordinary, though, is the way it accomplishes this while presenting music as a richly textured experience that never strays into harshness.
This cartridge is supremely neutral and offers impressive levels of bass extension, hitting deeper and harder than pretty much anything I have ever fitted to a tonearm. My Lyra Kleos SL is slightly brighter at the top end, with perhaps an even more soaring sense of dynamics on (for example) female vocals, which can make music seem a shade more dramatic and exciting at times. The Cobalt Blue counters by offering a more liquid sense of flow to the music. Overall, I feel they operate on a very similar level at a similar price point. Both are stellar cartridges, among the best in the world. If you are in the market for a cartridge of impeccable quality, they should both be at the top of your list for audition. Which you ultimately prefer is going to be a markedly subjective decision based on your tonal priorities.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the Etsuro. It’s the kind of cartridge that leads you down a path of rediscovering old albums you haven’t heard in years, simply because the sound it produces is so alluring. This is a magnificent cartridge, fully deserving of the finest tonearm and turntable that you can muster. It’s good enough to be fitted to the most elite turntables money can buy, and affordable enough to elevate midrange turntables to the zenith of their abilities. In return you’ll be rewarded with some of the best analog replay money can buy.
After hearing the Cobalt Blue I was sorely tempted to buy the review sample to use as a reference alongside my Lyra, but I am in the midst of trying to upgrade both my preamplifier and then my phono stage, so sadly this sublime piece of analog engineering is going back to its rightful owner. I’d better avoid staining that lovely wooden box with my tears when it finally does.
. . . Jonathan Gorse
jonathan@soundstage.com
Associated Equipment
- Turntables: SME Series Model 35 turntable with SME Series Vi (improved) tonearm and Lyra Kleos SL cartridge; Michell GyroDec turntable with SME Series IV tonearm and Ortofon MC 40X cartridge mounted on Townshend Seismic Platform
- Phono preamplifiers: Trichord Research Dino Mk3 with “Never Connected” Dino+ power supply, PS Audio Stellar phono stage
- Streaming DAC: Naim Audio NDX 2
- CD player: Naim Audio CDI on Townshend Seismic Podium
- Preamplifier: Naim Audio NAC 82
- Power amplifiers: Naim Audio NAP 350 monoblocks
- Power supply: Naim Audio HiCap
- Loudspeakers: ATC SCM40 on Townshend Audio Seismic Podiums
- Headphones: Sennheiser HD 800S, Beyerdynamic DT 880 Professional, AKG K701 Studio Reference
- Headphone amplifier: Beyerdynamic A20
- Support stands: Ash Designs Cosmic 5 and Cosmic 7 stands, both suspended on Townshend Seismic Isolation Bars with load cells calibrated for individual rack weight
- Power: Dedicated 100A mains spur feeding two Graham’s medical-grade, six-gang power blocks; Naim Hydra, Naim Power-Line Lites
- Cabling: Chord Company Sarum T loudspeaker cables, Naim NAC A5 loudspeaker cables, Naim interconnects on most Naim amplification; Chord Co. Sarum T Super ARAY XLR, Chord Co. SignatureX Tuned ARAY DIN-RCA, Chord Co. SignatureX RCA-XLR, Chord Co. EpicX ARAY RCA-RCA, Chord Co. Signature X ARAY interconnects for phono stages, Vertere Redline RCA-XLR between Hi-Cap and NAP250, QED interconnects for secondary sources
- Setup tools: AVID high precision level with 45-rpm adapter, Suaoki laser spirit level, Rega Atlas digital stylus force gauge, SME strobe disc, Ogeto laser measure
Etsuro Urushi Cobalt Blue moving-coil cartridge
Price: US$4800, CA$6300, £4250, €4850
Warranty: Two years
Excel Sound Corporation of Japan Ltd. & Dai-Ichi Shoji Co., Ltd.
Yokohama Landmark Tower 20th Floor
2-2-1 Minatomirai,
Nishi District
Yokohama City
Kanagawa Prefecture
220-8120 Japan
Website: www.etsurojapan.com
UK distributor:
Unique Audio
Berry Grove Ln
Watford WD25 8AE
Phone: +44 7913 964746
Email: mik@unique-audio.co.uk
