Gerald Jakob-san at High Fidelity Studio / HANA German distributor has forwarded us this excellent with the best overall grade ever, review article on HANA-SL MKII and SH MKII by Mathias Böde-san in “Stereo” magazine (Dec. 2024) in Germany, for your further ongoing and powerful reference.

Following is English description, translated by them.

Change in the S-class.
After 8 years Hana is changing their S-MCs.
They are both optimized in many things.
The new cantilever is only one example.

Since they were launched the SH and the SL have been one of the most popular cartridges in their price class.
But their launch was already 8 years ago.
In this period of time the chief developer Masao Okada launched the M-series, the blue and the red two very good high end cartridges from them the smaller will benefit.

From the outside they differ with the black brass plate on the top which also raises the weight to more practical 8,6 grams. It also stabilizes the ABS housing with soft feel elastomer.in addition the bond to the headshell is better.
They also changed to threads in the housing.
In the inside they both have the coil carrier of the Blue with high grade copper winding. In conjunction with the Alnico-magnet from the M-cartridges we have a generator where every part is treated cryonically. Which means cooled near total zero point. This should stabilize the molecular structure and improve the sound.
Also new is the conical cantilever which is more rigid with lowered mass at the tip, where we see the proven diamond with Shibata cut.
The measurements where excellent this means the build quality is superb. Very good frequency response.
A very little more power in the high frequences which doesn´t mean anything in the practical use. More important is the channel balance. Deepest respect !
Very easy with the settings of impedance and even the output is higher as the manufactures says.
We first tried the SH MK2 against the old SH. It only took the beginning of Monty Alexanders Arthurs Theme to see that the MK2 was much more split up, fleet-footed and agile. The new one is the 100 Euro more easily worth.
The difference to the old S-Klasse was more than big and the difference to the M-class is smaller now. But in colour opulence and in the bass the M is better.
The comparison between SL MK2 and SH MK 2 ? Normally the low outputs are with more details and finesse and the high outputs sound heavier and more striking. It´s the same with the Hana duo, but the difference is less than normal. The SL MK2 got deeper in the complex structure of Diana Kralls opener of the Paris concert, where the SH MK2 had more intense luminosity in the fundamental range, which was only evident in the direct comparison.
All in all the new S-class brings two excellent and wonderful musical cartridges for Phono MM and MC inputs.
They outperform their predecessors much more significant than the low increase of price would expect. Like eight years ago they are the benchmark in this league. The MK 2 team, there is also a SL MK 2 mono, is absolutely on the winners side.