Strictly necessary cookies keep you signed in. Optional ones help us see which pages land and which don't. Pick what you want — you can change it any time. Details.
Cartridges
Cut grooves the way they were meant to be read — Fukuoka cartridges with the cross-ring motor and a deep mono line.
where to hear it
Are you a dealer carrying this line? Get on the map.
about miyajima laboratory
Miyajima Laboratory is a Japanese phono-cartridge specialist based in Fukuoka, run by founder Noriyuki Miyajima, who has been building cartridges there for roughly three decades. The brand's signature engineering is the "cross-ring" motor assembly, a reworking of the moving-coil generator intended to keep the armature's pivot point closer to the stylus tip and improve how the cartridge tracks the groove — a focused mechanical idea rather than a feature list. The stereo line includes the Saboten, Shilabe, and Madake (the latter built around a bamboo cantilever), alongside the Destiny and other models. Miyajima is best known, though, for its mono cartridges: a deep catalog of dedicated mono and 78rpm designs, including the Zero Mono with no vertical compliance, made specifically for listeners restoring older and mono pressings rather than forcing a stereo cartridge onto mono records. Miyajima competes in the specialist-cartridge conversation with Ortofon's SPU and mono lines, Koetsu, and the other Japanese coil makers — and it largely owns the serious-mono niche, where buyers come to it directly for that expertise. In the US it is distributed by Robyatt Audio, with Mockingbird Distribution also handling the brand. Press coverage is anchored by repeated Stereophile reviews across the stereo and mono ranges. Every cartridge is hand-built in Fukuoka, Japan.