Haniwa's HCVC01: A breakthrough product?

ANALOG CORNER

- MICHAEL FREMER

Lately, current amplification-based moving coil phono preamplifiers have gotten a great deal of well-deserved press. For years, Haniwa’s Dr. Kubo has been designing and selling super–low-internal-impedance cartridges because such cartridges work best with such devices. He has also been designing and selling his own current-amplification phono preamplifier; I recently reviewed one of each as part of Haniwa’s Vinyl Playback System, which consists of the player—a modified Transrotor supplied turntable—the HTAM01 tonearm, a modified ViV Lab Rigid Float tonearm; the HTCR-CO phono cartridge; and the HEQ-A03-C1 current-mode phono stage.

Here’s something new to Haniwa’s range and to hi-fi: the $6000 HCVC01 passive current-to-voltage converter. It’s analogous to a step-up transformer and is intended to feed your choice of moving-magnet phono preamplifiers. I don’t believe anyone has previously on the cartridge used) is claimed to be 10mV— about double that of your average MM cartridge. That’s maximum, so it should be fine for most MM phono preamps.