Hifi Pig Advertising Promotion

Hifi Pig brings you a series of promotional articles about our Great British Brands exhibiting at High End Munich 2017. We let them tell you all about their philosophy and products.

Munich 2017 – the reveal. This Munich sees Funk at its most ambitious. There, not just one but two new arms will be on show.

LAB 2

LAB 2 (basically LAB “laboratory standard” arm for transcription) is an elaborately configured, thread bearing multi-featured and highly capable arm. It is the next model up from FX3, which itself has been so warmly received from many different quarters and on the forums. LAB 2 has evolved from FX3 in that it utilises more advanced technologies.

LAB 2’s bearing is a filament based, friction free design (pat pend) and takes Funk’s thread bearing concept to a new level to produce a full frictionless performance. i.e It is free to move in all directions.

Another feature is how it applies the bias and Azimuth. It is great fun to hear your signal just “snap” perfectly into focus.

Unsurprising it uses our now famous FX technology for the arm beam but with LAB 2, the tube itself has moved up a level and is ceramic coated aluminium. This endows the tube with even greater inherent rigidity than before – It is a truism that you just can’t have too much rigidity.

A side-pillar design further enhances usability and provides for dynamic Vertical Tracking Adjustment of the arm.

All of this comes together in allowing full precise setup when it delivers a wide, open sound stage, a very free low frequency performance and pin point imaging.

Priced at £3, 300, LAB 2 is a very complete design.
Although you might think that would be enough Funk has never been one to shy away from controversy, which brings us to the remarkable AK 1.

We like to describe AK 1 as:

“The Record Cutter…in Reverse”.

After all, isn’t that is what we want to do when we replay our records? We want to undo what was done.

We don’t think anyone has ever gone about this task in quite this way.

AK 1 has been Arthur Khoubesserian’s obsessive dream child for the past 12 years and we believe it is the best passive arm that one can conceive.

12 years is when the question of arm tracking and true faultless transcription was first explored. There, just one problem alone took some two years to solve and required going back to the record cutter to overcome, hence the strap-line: “The Record Cutter…in Reverse”, for that is what AK 1 is intended to do.

This then became the genesis for one of the main feature components for AK 1 and now is also “pat pending”.

AK 1 might look pretty radical and you might think you are already looking at the “patent ending” aspect but there you would be wrong.

Every single aspect of the design has been explored, questioned, rejected.

AK 1’s features go from a state of the art laser sintered ceramic FX arm beam, through the titanium filament controlled zero-tracking system, the selection of a radial arm as opposed to a so-called tangential tracking arm and so on.

As far as is humanly possible, nothing has been left to chance.

Everything comes together to produce a product of that combines the best of modern technology with the height of human ingenuity genuinely borne of 40 years of experience.

There is a white paper on AK 1 and we invite you to read it to understand more of what it takes to create this most odd artefact, the passive pickup arm – the product that historically has arguably been the weakest component in the audio chain!

Each AK 1 will be hand made by Arthur himself and signed by him.

The production run will limited to just 100 pieces world-wide.

A partnering turntable will be made available next year.

With Munich chosen for the formal launch for these products, it will be the first time anyone outside of Funk will be able to see either product in reality; showing actual photographs of them in advance here defeats that objective of a true “launch”.

For now then and in order to whet your appetite we enclose CGI images of each arm. This also holds for our website. After Munich the CGIs will be replaced by photographs.

To coincide with this feature laden launch, Funk’s old website has now been taken down and consigned to history. A new website will be going live “by” Monday.

(We apologise for this strange gap but the delay is due to legal requirements imposed by the “pat pending” referred to above. Patent applications must be filed before any information can be made public)

As if that wasn’t enough, both Vector and Saffire with Kinetik Kradle will also be on show for the first time.

At Munich you will be able to purchase Funk-cessories:

Achromats, Bo1ngs and the new “The Lift”, end-of-side arm lift.

We look forward to seeing those of you who can make it to Munich this year.

For those who cannot make Munich, you will be able to read more about the all products in forthcoming reviews and as information gets released on various sites and channels in the coming months.

After Munich, Funk will be represented at Cranage.

There is also a special public day-event in sunny Sussex in July with a select group of British companies, Funk, Gekko, Vivid and Mola Mola. Although all are invited but this is not a free-for-all. Ticketed, you will be able to have an experience tailored to your wishes and needs.

Please see our website for more details and information nearer the time.

Up next is our final Hifi Pig Great British Brands At Munich feature from The Chord Company.