CES 2008

Franc Kuzma was showing a fascinating tonearm, the $7300–7500 4Point, named because it has unique vertical and horizontal bearings. Kuzma said, "It's like a unipivot tonearm that can't 'chatter' in the horizontal plane."

But well designed unipivots aren't supposed to chatter.

"No, they are not supposed to."

A rigid VTA tower allows repeatable VTA and azimuth adjustments. The tonearm fits on 9" configurations, said Kuzma, but "is effectively 11"."

"And it is biwired," said Kuzma.

???

It has eight special silver-alloy wires coming out of the cartridge. Four of them are continuous to the phono preamp, where they are terminated with Eichmann Bullet connectors, but the other four terminate in a breakout box with Cardas female RCAs, so you can use two different phono sections."

Here's the kicker: I was hipped to the Kuzma tonearm by digital designer Kevin Halverson. "It's the slickest piece of mechanical engineering, I've seen in a long time," Halverson said.