Головки звукоснимателя — Segno Maya

The Maya is a low-output moving-coil phono cartridge sold under the Segno name and designed in the UK by Guy Sergeant of Pure Sound, who learned cartridge building in Japan alongside Kondo, the founder of Audio Note. Pure Sound also handles distribution. The brand takes its name from the segno sign used in written music, which tells a performer to repeat a passage from that point. The Maya was announced in the summer of 2025 at a UK retail price of GBP 999.95, and the same figure was quoted for the US market.

Key specs that matter

Output is 0.35 mV at 1 kHz and 5 cm/sec, and the DC resistance of the coils is 2 ohm. Frequency response is quoted as 20 Hz to 25 kHz within 1 dB, channel separation is better than 28 dB and channel balance is within 0.5 dB. Dynamic compliance, measured at 10 Hz, is 15 um/mN. The tracking force window runs from 1.7 to 2.5 g, with 2.0 g as the recommended setting. The body stands 17 mm tall and the cartridge weighs 7.6 g. A load between 10 and 100 ohm is suggested for the phono input, with values of 50 ohm or lower also used in practice.

Engineering and use context

The generator carries four hand-wound coils of 5N silver, 99.999 percent pure, on a square permalloy former, and silver wire also runs from the coils to the output pins. Silver coils are rare at this price, where copper is the usual choice. The magnet is samarium cobalt, a rare earth material that is costlier and more brittle than the neodymium used in most current cartridges, and Segno chose it for the way its field recovers after inducing a signal in the coils. The cantilever is a titanium tube, stiffer than aluminium though heavier than boron and harder to machine, and it carries a precision-ground fine line diamond whose long, narrow contact line follows the modulations on each groove wall more closely than a conical or elliptical profile. The generator sits in an aluminium body anodised dark blue, with a box-shaped outline and threaded mounting holes, so screws go straight in without separate nuts and the flat sides make alignment on a protractor easier.

Pairing

The light body and medium compliance point to tonearms of medium effective mass, within the adjustment range of most current pivoted arms. The very low coil resistance lets a step-up transformer with a high ratio work efficiently, while an active moving-coil stage should offer enough gain for such a low signal and a load setting within the suggested window.

Alternatives

Segno offers no other cartridge besides the Maya, so there is no second model of this category from the brand.