Built from bamboo and wood

These are not aesthetic choices.

Bamboo’s internal structure — fibre bundles and elongated cells running along the grain — is non-homogeneous in a way that engineered materials are not. Energy passing through does not travel in a straight line. It disperses gradually within the grain, rather than reflecting back as the sharp ringing peaks I had heard from stiffer, more uniform structures.

That property pointed toward a second decision. In a conventional MC cartridge, the flex point is typically a thin alloy wire attached to the cantilever shank — elastic function and transmission function handled by two different structures, joined at a transition point. I tapered the bamboo shank itself down to around 0.2mm, so that flex occurs within the continuous material. No joint. No boundary between dissimilar structures where energy might behave unpredictably.

The body follows the same logic. Where engineering polymers tend to produce fairly distinct resonant peaks, natural wood distributes energy more broadly — not eliminating resonance, but preventing it from concentrating at a few sharp points.

Bamboo cantilever. Integral flex zone. Wood body.

Three separate decisions made at different times, which turned out to be the same decision — to work with how these materials naturally handle energy, rather than around it.