Our Oyster MM Cartridges

Our Oyster Series cartridges have established themselves as smooth, warm and refined alternatives to more aggressive-sounding options. They are exceptionally crafted with premium materials, enabling highly musical, poised and polished sonics that steer clear of listening fatigue. An integrated body and generator system stifles internal resonance and readily transfers uncontrolled energy from the cartridge to the tonearm where it is dissipated harmlessly. This reduces distortion and coloration, leaving you with pure analog fidelity that conveys the emotional message embedded in your music.

Upgrade Path

Rainier, Olympia, Moonstone, Wellfleet and Amethyst use interchangeable stylus replacements. This allows you to upgrade when it suits you, or to keep a backup around for worn records. The cartridge bodies are identical with the exception of Amethyst, which uses an enhanced anatomy but remains compatible with the full range of styli. As you move up, you achieve improved fidelity with varying cantilevers, magnets and stylus tips, all of which bear audible improvements in detail, imagining, resolution and more.

Handmade in Japan

Each Sumiko phono cartridge is hand-assembled by the world-class cartridge makers at Excel Sound in Yokohama, Japan – a relationship we’ve proudly maintained for nearly forty years. We use only the finest materials that combine to deliver performance that has enlightened generations of listeners. Each design is thoroughly auditioned until it meets our stringent standards for sound. Production is then executed by expert craftsmen with a collective eye for precision & quality. The result is a family of cartridges that render emotion through tonally balanced, refined and fatigueless analogue reproduction.

Featuring an improved low-impedance, low-noise generator, Amethyst renders stark black backgrounds from which music simply blossoms. To do justice to the improved generator, we add a low-mass nude line-contact stylus to an ultra-stiff, low-mass hollow cantilever. The overall reduction in moving mass propels the highest level of stylus fidelity, faithfully conveying its motion to the fixed coil assembly. Thusly Amethyst transcribes vivid detail, wowing dynamics and exceptional spacial imaging in an inviting, articulate soundstage. Music flows effortlessly with compelling depth, immersing you in the richness we all love about analogue sound.