Turntable Accessories · Headshells
There are plenty of headshells. But only a handful of manufacturers have ever taken on carbon fibre — that ultra-light, exceptionally low-resonance high-performance material that is as unforgiving to work with as it is convincing in use. The Oyaide HS-CF is the benchmark of its kind: developed in 2007 specifically for lovers of analogue audio, copied countless times since — yet never matched in precision.
The shell is made from 4 mm thick CFRP (Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastics) built up from 17 individually cured prepreg layers, angle-moulded in a single operation — single moulding, without a single glued joint. That is precisely where the difference lies: bonded multi-part shells disturb the vibration moment at every material boundary. The HS-CF is a monolithic component that absorbs vibration and dissipates it as heat rather than returning it to the cartridge. Supplied and already fitted are four HSR-AG headshell lead wires in 5N pure silver — on their own a serious proposition at retail.
17-Layer Single Moulding
Formed seamlessly in one piece — no bonded joints, no disturbed vibration moment
Toray T700 Core
High-strength aerospace-grade fibre — surface layers in fine T300 1K cloth
HSR-AG Included
Four 5N pure silver lead wires, double silk wound, fitted at the factory
What does a headshell actually have to do? It must be light, yet highly rigid and tough — and it must bring vibration to rest quickly. Those three demands contradict one another in almost every classical material: aluminium is light but rings; brass damps well but is heavy; plastic is light and dead but far too soft. Carbon fibre composite resolves this conflict — provided the lay-up is right.
This is where the HS-CF becomes interesting. Oyaide aligns every fibre layer bar one central layer unidirectionally, in a single common orientation. This deliberately asymmetric arrangement maximises internal damping: the one transverse layer breaks the symmetry of the laminate and prevents bending modes from forming cleanly and building up. The matrix is a high-toughness epoxy resin whose strength characteristics remain essentially unchanged over time — an HS-CF does not age in any acoustically meaningful sense.
The fibre quality is no accident either. The core material is Toray's high-strength T700 — the same class of material used in modern commercial aircraft construction. For the visible surface layers Oyaide uses the finer T300 1K cloth, whose silvery shimmering weave gives the HS-CF its unmistakable, understated elegance. After moulding, every shell is individually CNC-machined to final dimensions. The matte silver finger lift provides the single deliberate counterpoint to the black carbon structure.
The mounting section — the SME bayonet — is executed as an aluminium coupling with glass-filled resin press-fitted inside. This pairing makes sense twice over: the aluminium provides dimensionally accurate, play-free locking to the arm tube, while the resin cleanly insulates the four contact pins from one another. The pins themselves are gold-plated brass — brass for the mechanical stability of the contact pressure, gold against tarnishing and contact resistance, which becomes audible precisely at the microvolt signal levels of an MC cartridge.
The HSR-AG Silver Lead Wires
The four supplied headshell lead wires are not a throw-in but a standalone Oyaide product: the HSR-AG. Its conductor is 5N pure silver (99.999 %), continuously cast in a high-frequency electric furnace, then consolidated through 19 cold-rolling stages, annealed twice and drawn through a diamond die. The purpose of all that effort: a crystal structure without voids at the grain boundaries — the very place where cheaply drawn wire causes signal transfer to falter on a microscopic scale.
Seven individual 0.2 mm strands are twisted to a conductor cross-section of 0.2 mm². That is generously specified for the minute signal voltages of a cartridge and reduces conductor resistance to a minimum — a point not to be underestimated with low-impedance MC systems in particular. The insulation consists of a double silk winding, a classic of cable craft: silk has a very low dielectric constant, adds almost no mass and stays permanently flexible, so the wires do not mechanically strain the cartridge. The terminals are rhodium-plated phosphor bronze — spring-hard, so they still grip securely after many cartridge swaps.
The HS-CF fits all tonearms with an SME bayonet — the detachable connection developed by SME that has been the global de facto standard for decades. Cartridges are mounted to the usual half-inch spacing (12.7 mm); the slotted holes allow longitudinal adjustment to set overhang and offset angle.
At 12 grams the HS-CF sits in the middle of the universal headshell field, and is deliberately positioned as a neutral choice. The relationship that matters is this: effective tonearm mass is always quoted including the headshell, so every gram more or less shifts the arm/cartridge resonance. That resonance should fall within a window of roughly 8 to 12 Hz — high enough not to be excited by record warps (typically below 8 Hz), low enough to stay out of the audible band. More mass lowers the resonant frequency, less mass raises it.
In practice this means the HS-CF works excellently with medium- to low-compliance MM and MC cartridges, and is the obvious answer when a heavy stock headshell in cast aluminium or zinc die-cast has pulled the resonance too far down. Anyone running a notably high-compliance cartridge should check the resulting resonant frequency beforehand. And anyone who already owns several cartridges will quickly come to value the real convenience gain: align the cartridge once, swap the headshell, done — without resetting overhang, azimuth and tracking force every time.
Oyaide Electric began in 1952 as a small shop in Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district, initially specialising in magnet wire and later moving into industrial, appliance and coaxial cabling. Company founder Kazuji Oyaide developed Japan's first audiophile mains distributor, the OCB-1; the OR-800 loudspeaker cable with its star-quad construction followed. Over the decades the cable specialist became one of the most respected manufacturers of connectors and analogue accessories — and to this day every product is made exclusively in Japan.
That self-image explains the HS-CF better than any specification sheet: a component that looks pared back on the outside, yet is considered in every detail — fibre orientation, alloy, insulation material, contact plating. Oyaide themselves put it in terms of simple things demanding the finest craftsmanship precisely because they are simple. If you are looking for a headshell that convinces not by drawing attention to itself but by the absence of any character of its own, you are in the right place.
| Manufacturer |
Oyaide Electric, Tokyo (Japan) |
| Model |
HS-CF |
| Type |
Universal headshell with SME bayonet |
| Shell material |
CFRP, 17-layer carbon fibre (single moulding) |
| Material thickness |
4.0 mm |
| Core fibre |
Toray T700 (high strength) |
| Surface layers |
Toray T300 1K cloth, silvery sheen |
| Lay-up |
Unidirectional, one differently oriented central layer |
| Matrix |
High-toughness epoxy resin |
| Manufacturing |
Moulded in one piece, then CNC-machined |
| Coupling / socket |
Aluminium with press-fitted resin insulation |
| Contact pins |
Brass, gold-plated |
| Cartridge mounting |
Half-inch standard (12.7 mm), slotted holes |
| Dimensions (L × W × H) |
56 × 20 × 15.9 mm |
| Weight |
12.0 g |
| Headshell lead wires |
Oyaide HSR-AG, factory-fitted |
| Lead wire conductor |
5N pure silver (99.999 %), 7 × 0.2 mm = 0.2 mm² |
| Lead wire insulation |
Double silk winding |
| Lead wire terminals |
Phosphor bronze, rhodium-plated |
| Supplied with |
HS-CF headshell, 4 × HSR-AG lead wires (fitted), mounting screws (2 × M2.6/7 mm, 2 × M2.6/12 mm) and 2 nuts |
| Introduced |
2007 |
| Country of manufacture |
Made in Japan |
