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Kuzma Stabi S Turntable with Outboard Power Supply and Stogi S Tonearm

Chris Martens

A soul-satisfying turntable and arm from Slovenias Kuzma.
Interestingly, though, it is one of Kuzmas least costly and most deceptively simple designs that first catches many enthusiasts eyes: the minimalist Stabi S belt-drive turntable and Stogi S hydraulically-damped unipivot tonearm. This elegant turntable and arm turntables to be dead quiet, and yet veteran analog enthusiasts recognize that there are subtle yet audible tonal-quality differences in the background silences that various turntables produce. About now, you might be wondering if silences can even have tonal qualities,
y dad, now retired, is a mechanical engineer, and from looking over his shoulder throughout his career I learned that the field could be a strange and wonderful marriage of art and science. Great designers have a flair for creating solutions where practical mechanics and pleasing aesthetics become one, and where invention flows freely from a seemingly endless river of fresh ideas. Such is the case with the turntable and tonearm designs of the Slovenian engineer Franc Kuzma. In fact, if you lined up Kuzmas products in a row they would seem so different in concept and execution that you might think each was the brainchild of a different man. Plainly, Kuzma is one of those rare individuals who can see and solve problems from many different angles.
The single quality that most defines the Stabi S is its ability to produce deep, quiet, ever-soslightly-warm-sounding backgrounds.
look quite striking, but their appearance gives only a hint of whats in store when listeners hear them in action. The mission of any turntable is to rotate records at precise and stable speeds without introducing (or sustaining) noises or vibrations that could disrupt the playback process. We want but I would argue they can and do. (Picture in your mind the difference between, say, the quiet of a church sanctuary at midnight and the interior of a warehouse at that same hour, and youll grasp my point.) The single quality that most defines the Stabi S is its ability to produce deep,
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quiet, ever-so-slightly-warm-sounding backgrounds that remind me of the profound hush you hear in a concert hall, just before the music begins. While the Stabi S may not be quite as quiet as toptier Kuzma models such as the Stabi Reference or Stabi XL, it makes a highly satisfying alternative, and at a price point normal mortals can handle. Performance is no doubt helped by the outboard power-supply/speed-control box supplied with the deluxe version of the Stabi S that I tested. If the Stabi Ss background silence were a color, Id call that color a warm black. By contrast, most Clearaudio tables Ive heard, and many recent-generation VPIs as well, seem to produce an equally deep but colder silence that I would characterize as an icy blue-black background behind the music. One could probably build a case for either background color, but I prefer the Stabi Ss rendition of silence for two musically defensible reasons. Its warm black backgrounds are strongly reminiscent of those you might hear in live music venues. I find this quality helps promote listening for the overall gestalt of the music, whichin my bookis a good thing. And this is really important: I find that the way individual notes emerge from and then decay back into the Stabi Ss noise floor sounds much more natural and continuous than does the notes-stand-out-in-sharp-relief presentation of the colder-sounding tables. Does this mean the Stabi swallows or obscures transient information or fine details? Certainly not. Its just that the Stabi S lets the information in the record grooves unfold in a natural way, without imparting even a hint of momentarily exciting, but ultimately fatiguing transient zing. There are more lively-sounding tables than the Stabi S on the market, but in many cases I cant reconcile their sound with that of live music. The Stogi S is a highly cost-effective, hydraulically-damped unipivot tonearm that has the ability to unleash the strengths of top-tier cartridges such as Shelters 90Xcartridges that cost many

The Stogi S is a highly cost-effective, hydraulicallydamped unipivot tonearm that has the ability to unleash the strengths of top-tier cartridges.
times what the arm does. It enables cartridges to produce bass that is energetic, deeply extended, and yet tightly focused. For instance, near the opening of OvertureCotton Avenue from Joni Mitchells Don Juans Reckless Daughter [Asylum], Jaco Pastorius strikes a subterranean, thunderclap-like note on an open bass-guitar string, and the Stogi S/Shelter combo captures everything that note has to offer, including its fierce attack, richly modulated envelope, and long, slow decay that rings with sustained low-frequency energy. Other good arm/cartridge pairs Ive heard typically cant produce bass like thisbass that hits with sledgehammer force, yet speaks with vox humana expressiveness. At midrange and treble frequencies, the Stogi S facilitates the cartridges precise and invigorating retrieval of transient and harmonic details, while at the same time fostering an overall sound that is graceful and smooth. I attribute this elusive combination of detail and smoothness to the Stogi Ss damping system, and it is pure magic. For me, it was a revelation to revisit classic CTI jazz recordings from the 1970s, such as Freddy Hubbards Red Clay or Jim Halls Concierto, and the Stabi S/Stogi S pair proved a perfect time machine, unlocking incredibly fine timbral and textural details in those old records in a way no analog rig from the 70s could have done. Hubbards trumpet and Halls guitar just sound so right through the Stogi S/Shelter pair, with details pouring forth as from a natural spring, without any artificial edge enhancement to mar the presentation. Finally, we come to my personal favorite of the Stogi Ss characteristics; namely, it ability to help cartridges create rock-solid images and spectacularly three-dimensional soundstages. Where some otherwise good arm/cartridge combos struggle to produce images that stay focused or soundstages that break free from the speakers or the dimensions of the listening room, the Stogi S/Shelter pair makes both tasks look easy. I almost fell off my couch when I first heard the huge soundstages the Stogi S produced, and then experienced the illusion of the near-physical presence of instruments and performers upon those stages. This quality proved especially gripping on the Quartetto Italiano performance of the Dvork American String Quartet in F, Op. 96 [Philips], where the voices of the individual instruments rang true, not just because timbres were accurately reproduced, but also because the sizes (and shapes) of the instruments were rendered with almost sculptural precision. The sense of being transported to the recording site was compelling thanks to a myriad small

More on the Stogi

he Stogi S arm is a simple yet effective unipivot design with a downward-facing spike that rests in a bearing cup whose pivot point is located in the plane of the record, minimizing warp-induced wow. The bearing cup is positioned in the center of a basin that gets partially filled with silicone-oil damping fluid upon which the understructure of the arm floats. The arm features two brass counterweights slung beneath a small tail-shaft; users rotate one or both of the eccentrically mounted weights for basic azimuth adjustments, or adjust a weighted trimscrew for finer azimuth tuning. The Stogi S provides a simple anti-skating mechanism that audibly improves cartridge tracking. CM

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spatial cues that suggested I was in a space whose acoustics differed from those of my listening room. And the performers sounded eerily present and alive, in part because the arm/cartridge caught subliminal details that captured the players moving in their chairs as the performance progressed. The point is that the Stogi S helps cartridges do many small things well, and that together those small things add up to a heightened sense of musical realisma greater willingness on the listeners part to suspend disbelief and simply get lost in the music. Where does the Stabi S/Stogi S fit in the broader spectrum of available table/arm combos? At $3300, the Kuzma slots in neatly between two likely competitors, VPIs $2500 Scoutmaster and $5500 Super Scoutmaster. Because the Stabi S table and Stogi S are minimalist designs its easy to miss their underlying sophistication, but a side-by-side comparison between the Scoutmaster and the Kuzma pair proves revealing. The Scoutmaster starts out with a price advantage, but to get it to match up evenly with the Kuzma rig youd need to add VPIs $999 outboard SDS power supply (the Kuzma comes with an outboard supply), an aftermarket drop counterweight for the VPI arm (the Kuzma has drop counterweights), a dust cover (the Kuzma has one), and interconnect cables to connect the VPI to your phonostage (the Kuzma features generously long cables whose wires run in one uninterrupted piece from the headshell to the RCA plugs). The closer you look the more value youll see in the Kuzma combo. And consider this: If you set aside the $1900 youd save by buying the Stabi S/Stogi S instead of VPIs brilliant but costly Super Scoutmaster, youd be well on your way toward the price of a statement-class phono cartridge such as Shelters 90X. I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with the Kuzma Stabi S/Stogi S, and Im not looking forward to the day

when it must be returned to its U.S. distributor. Ill admit that I was skeptical of the design at first (I kept look at the table and thinking, Wheres the rest of it?), but the Kuzmas quiet, clear, and natural sound soon won me over, as did its ability to tap the enormous performance potential of top-tier phono cartridgessomething not all table/arm combos in this price range can do. But maybe the most telling observation of all was that, when I started spinning LPs on the Kuzma, I never wanted my listening sessions to end, which is why I gave the Stabi S/Stogi S a TAS Golden Ear Award & in this issue.
S P E C I F I C AT I O N S Kuzma Deluxe Stabi S turntable Description: Suspension-less belt-drive turntable with outboard power supply Speeds: 33.3 and 45rpm, electronically controlled Kuzma Stogi S tonearm Description: 9" hydraulically-damped unipivot tonearm with adjustable VTA, azimuth, and anti-skating mechanism A S S O C I AT E D E Q U I P M E N T Linn Sondek LV-12/Ittok LVII turntable/arm; Shelter 90X and Benz Micro ACE L phono cartridges; Musical Surroundings Phonomena phonostage; Supex SDT-722 cartridge step-up transformer; Musical Fidelity kW500 integrated amplifier; Rogue Audio Metis preamplifier; NuForce Reference 9 and Channel Islands Audio D-200 monoblock power amplifiers; Magnepan MG1.6 and Monitor Audio Silver Series RS6 loudspeakers; Cardas Neutral Reference and PNF Audio Icon/Symphony interconnects and speaker cables; RGPC 1200S power conditioner
D I S T R I B U TO R I N F O R M AT I O N THE MUSIC.COM (800) 457-2577, Ext. 22 kuzma.si themusic.com Prices: Stabi S turntable, $2400; Stogi S arm, $900

Kuzma Stabi S with tonearm Stogi S

15/04/09 8:49 AM

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Kuzma Stabi S with tonearm Stogi S Page 2 Page 3 Alle Seiten
There is hardly a record player on the market, that goes in such an opposite direction as the smallest one of Kuzma does. Whether this optical delicacy is only made for design freaks, individualists, and non-conformists or is also attractive for "ear-people" is that, what Helmut Rohrwild wanted to examine more closely, who in spite of an intensive analogue past only lately had his sight on Kuzma-products.
written by Helmut Rohrwild [01-2009]
There are products, like, for example, record players of Franc Kuzma, of which you don't take any notice for a long time without being able to tell why, before they catch the eye one day and possibly even leave a deep impression. In the case of Kuzma, I was granted a late light-bulb moment with two tone arms: everything made sense und offered, above all, an excellent equivalent value in relation of price and sound. As I have been a friend of affordable listening-enjoyment for a long time, I have looked around in the portfolio of Kuzma motivated by the two tone arms and chose the smallest record player for a further test, which was available unmodified for a long time. Anyway, at least in the basic version, I believe this record player to be "very affordable". That looks quite different when upgrading it armed to the teeth with a reference power supply unit and an Upgrade, which I could not resist to do. This also regards the tester: the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. What really impressed me with this product range of Franc Kuzma was the technical scope of drives and tone arms. The technical spectrum ranges from a minimalist design of the Stabi S over the classical appearing and spring-loaded Stabi reference to a monumental Stabi XL with a mass-drive of utmost dimensioning, and the tone arms are not less rich of species the Stogi S as a one-point-pinnacle-bearing arm, then the Stogi (Reference) in classical cardan-bearing form of construction, and the Air Line, which is the present norm of air mounted tangential tone arms. The assortment of tone arms was shortly extended by the 4 Point, an ingenious masterstroke. As you see, Franz Kuzma has dedicated himself totally to the analogue matter remarkable. But now to the actual object of my test: the Stabi S with Stogi S. The fun with this record player starts already with unpacking and assembling. The parts come out in the right order and nearly fit into the suitable position by themselves. Nevertheless, the properly made manual is of help as most of the customers very seldom build up a drive. The probably most unusual part is the basic construction of the Stabi S, a "T" out of two massive brass rods with the meaty diameter of five centimetres. That looks rather dainty, but in view of the assembly
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diameter of five centimetres. That looks rather dainty, but in view of the assembly the weight should not be underestimated. At the ends of the rods O-rings are applied, which prevent sliding and on the other hand offer a decoupling, but rather weak. Even if there is the danger of getting on your nerves: please take care that the base body and the surface area of assembly are really adjusted precisely and absolutely horizontal. Those, who do not take meticulous care will give away sound potential unnecessarily. The rod-formed base of the record player only offers very little contact surface for airborne sound stimulus a much underestimated disturbing component which is "spread" by targeted use of a very attractive not smooth optical matt-black surface, thanks to a "technical" lacquering. Near to the "T" the upright bearing is mounted, which has to be filled with oil up to respective marking before the pivot is put in carefully (!) together with the bearing ball of the sub-turntable. Then, the motor is set in right at the end of the "T" and the belt is applied. At the end of the assembly of the drive the actual turntable is set on to the sub-turntable and it is checked, whether the motor is in its proper place i.e., does not touch the turntable from underneath. The turntable has a rubber insertion and on top a tightly glued mat. According to experiences of measures improving the sound, such as laying on a millenium-mat or the SID-A did not result in audible improvements, which speaks in favour of the effectiveness of the turntable construction of the Stabi S. The synchronous motor by the way, also a very heavy little bloke in a massive housing - is powered via the reference power supply unit with clean pre-processed current. The reference power supply unit, at which also the speed of revolution can be selected, needs much room in depth when being assembled. There should be voluptuous 45 centimetres plus space for the cable. Well, the drive is now ready.

Therewith, it is now the time to build in the tone arm Stogi S. This is a one-pointpinnacle-bearing-construction, which meets the demands for this tone arm construction in nearly classical way. A Kuzma-typical mix of materials out of aluminium and brass is used by the tone arm: the matt-black lacquered arm pipe which is of aluminium and is vapour-coated in the inside with a foam-kernel carries a fixed head shell with the Kuzma-own stabilisation running upwards, which allows assembly of pick-ups of every size. At the rear end the arm pipe ends in the bearing bell, the upper part of which is of aluminium and carries the rather thick bearing thorn inside, which runs out to the bearing pinnacle in an obtuse angle. Top contact remains top contact, but for this reason the cone surface is so big, that the silicone absorbability can have effect in spite of the little reservoirs in the bearing cup. The absorbability should prevent unwanted movements of the pick-up-tone-armcombination, because it will let it "see" a higher mass and will therefore move the resonance frequency into a (hopefully) uncritical area. Depending on the pick-up, this can work very well, but not always. The only help is trying out and critical listening. The lower big part of the bearing bell is of brass as to concentrate as much mass as possible under the bearing points. From the backside of the bearing bell under the area of the arm pipe there protrudes the stump for the two-partbrass-counterbalance. You will find a counter-screw in the bigger one of the two weights, which is for fine-adjustment of the azimuth. Far upwards a little pin is mounted, on which the tone arm cable is secured for the transport. The counterpart thereof you will find in the arm basis. That is smart, because this measure makes sure of enough protection of the filigree cable-setting which sticks out at the upper end of the bearing bell, and which is probably till transition to the fixed cabling the most endangered part of the tone arm. The arm basis is applied with a massive shank into the tone arm receiver, which consists of a massive brass cylinder, which is fixed to the arm shaft with two grub screws and itself again is clamped to the drive. A little tip: the adjustment of the height should mainly be done with the brass cylinder so that the arm shaft is operated as low as possible. Alltogether, a technically sophisticated tone arm but, unfortunately, there is no lift for operation of same. A finger-lift la "4 point" would really make the handling easier. As a base for the Kuzma-player I have chosen a two-layer base, the two levels of which are separated from the Acoustic Solid by absorbing elements. This guarantees an adequate cost-efficient decoupling, but still functions quite well. Last but not least: The covering hood made of Acryl offers reasonable dust-protection and looks really great mounted onto the player.

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great mounted onto the player.
Therewith, we come to listening of music, first without any Upgrade which was not included by original delivery. For the first listening round the Denon DL 103 SA - the jubilee-version of this classic device - was mounted into the head shell of the tone arm. The assembly and adjustment was rather tricky, well, a typical "one-pointer"; here, the Kuzma-arm is no exception. But, what was audible with this combination per Brocksieper Phonomax or SAC nano entrata disco was more than worth all the fuss: powerful and dynamical totally Denon-like but, at the same time, this combination came to work as quick as a weasel and performed with luxurious sound-colours with a not too wide paintbrush, and, therefore, offered also always unexpectedly much resolution by good spacey picturing.
In the meantime, the Upgrade was delivered. It is a second turntable with same measurements as the turntable which is simply to be inserted between the subturntable and the record-turntable. Additionally, there are two spacers for the hood for balancing the height difference. Actually, here "only" the mass of the recordturntable is doubled. But what does "only" mean here? After all, the Stabi S comes with remarkable eight kilo turntable-mass, which brings in quite a portion of additional pressure and superior drive and makes sure that the Denon finally lifts off; concerning the sound, of course. That fits. A big recommendation also for the Upgrade, which is worth every Euro of its price. As the first run with the Denon was so promising, I brought in a much bigger MC-calibre for the second round: a Shelter 90X. Already after a short time two things were absolutely clear: first, that the Stogi S tone arm got on with the 90X without any problems and fathoms the potential of this tone arm quite strongly, and secondly, that the considerable higher price of the 90X, which is nearly four times as much as that of the Denon, is justified by an audible difference to the Denon. More resolution, still more finer painted sound-colours and a very sensitive differentiation of dynamic shadings; all this, embedded in a powerful performance in a believable appearing display of space, you will get from Shelter. That is really brilliant!
As a convinced advocate of moving magnet/moving iron I could not resist to found out, how the Kuzma-player gets along with this species of pick-up. The Nagaoka MP 500, the top model of the actual MI-assembly series of Nagoaka, has already worked excellently in some of my record players. Here, also it was not disappointing and offered an exemplary coherent performance with the Phonomax as well as with the MM-plug-in of the preamplifier Stax SR 14 S. This is what you can hear from this combination: very balanced playing over the total frequency area. Soundcolours are slightly less opulent as from Shelter or Denon. With more broad fineregulated dynamic of very sensitive up to non-braked vehemence. In comparison with Shelter and Denon all that in a more compact but more exact and stabile

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with Shelter and Denon all that in a more compact but more exact and stabile pictured space. Well, that is a statement! Those, who know me, will know: without a Decca usually nothing goes with me. Only, this time, it was an own goal. Not, that it did not fit concerning the sound. On the contrary. But, and this is a big but: Decca/London-pick-ups interact distinctly audible with the motor of the Kuzma. It buzzes the nearer to the inside groove, the louder. Nothing will help here. This combination definitely does not work. What a shame! As the last candidate I built in the smallest Kuzma pick-up: the KC-1. More of this soon, because it is still the obligatory playing-in time. A final conclusion would be unfair. But, what can be heard up to now is very promising.
Kuzma's smallest record player is definitely not only for the design freak but also for the ear-people a strike home. The tone arm gets along easily with all kinds of pick-ups. For me, the reference power supply unit is just as essential as the Upgrade. It is good, that you can upgrade both soundoptimisers later and, starting with this cost-effective basis model, will reach total satisfaction with the sound step by step.
Record player Kuzma Stabi S with tone arm Stogi S Technical data: Weight: 13 kg Measurements: 40 x 30 x 14 cm Turntable: 4 kg, with Upgrade 8 kg Revolution: 33 und 45 r.p.m. Distribution: Gaudios, Brandhofgasse 11, A-8010 Graz Internet: www.gaudios.info Prices: Stabi S: 1,760 Reference power supply unit: 985 Stogi S: 960 Upgrade Stabi S: 440 Guarantee: 2 years Listened to with: Preamplifier Funk MTX Monitor V3a Power amplifier Brocksieper LC 807 Loudspeaker outsider Equipe and alternatively with: Preamplifier Ambrosia 2000 of Spread Spectrum Technologies Power amplifier Son of Ampzilla of Spread Spectrum Technologies Loudspeaker TMR Standard IIIc
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