Kuzma Safir 9 Tonearm

March 18, 2022

NEW KUZMA SAFIR 9 TONEARM ANNOUNCED

Kuzma, the high-end Slovenian turntable and tonearm and cartridge brand, has a new flagship nine-inch tonearm due for release this spring, the Kuzma Safir 9.

After five-years of research and development, during which Kuzma has refined their existing designs and practices as well as introduced new materials, the Kuzma Safir 9 tonearm is finally ready for launch and will be shown for the first time at High End Munich 2022.

KUZMA SAFIR 9 TONEARM

The Kuzma Safir 9’s most obvious feature and the heart of the design is its conical sapphire arm tube. This provides the cartridge with stability, delivering optimum electromechanical performance from the generator. Extremely rigid, this tube is stiffer and offers a higher resonant frequency than any arm tube the brand has previously used. Its first break-up mode occurs at over 5KHz.

4POINT DESIGN

The bearings are a further development of Kuzma’s proprietary 4Point design, the four contact spikes being located in sapphire/ruby receptacles. These are designed to ensure rigid, friction-free coupling of the tonearm to its mount, allowing the headshell to move, freely and precisely on the optimum path across the record.

PRECISION ADJUSTMENTS

The sapphire tube and bearings are fitted into solid aluminium and brass blocks, whose inert support helps dissipate the mechanical vibration generated during playback. The double brass counterweight (with locking mechanism) allows extremely precise application of VTF, while azimuth can also be precision adjusted in small, repeatable increments with zero play. Kuzma says that the use of the sapphire arm tube makes this a high effective mass tonearm, suitable for low compliance cartridges only.

The tonearm is mounted to the turntable’s arm board using the Kuzma arm base. Arm height is adjusted with a fine VTA screw which controls the height of the tonearm’s pillar in the arm base, allowing allows precise and repeatable adjustments whenever required.

KONDO SILVER WIRE

The internal wiring uses special silver alloy wires from Kondo that run, unbroken from the cartridge pins via a 1.5 m long tonearm cable to the silver RCA connectors.