Analog Corner

At Stereophile, we don't generally allow Mulligans—review do-overs. Usually, we take a second look at a product we've reviewed only when the first sample turns out to have been defective, especially if it was damaged in shipping—and we rarely do even that.

In my March 2018 column I reviewed two new cartridges from Kuzma Ltd. (footnote 1): the CAR-50 ($5895) and the CAR-60 ($12,995). Presumably, CAR is an abbreviation of cartridge, but for $12,995 you could buy a car you could climb into and drive home—so the CAR-60 had better be a damn great cartridge. The CAR-60's qualities of parts and construction were certainly great, as were both its published specifications and the measurements I took of it. (See last month's column for details.)

Although I described the CAR-50's overall sound as "bland," I wrote very positively about both cartridges' spectacularly wide and appropriately deep if somewhat distant soundstaging. I described the CAR-60's strengths as transparency, liquidity, and freedom from such artifacts as hash, grain, and edge. But I concluded that the CAR-60 lacked the slam or bass grip or low-end extension delivered by Transfiguration's somewhat less expensive Proteus D. The only differences between the $6000 Proteus and the $10,500 Proteus D are the rhomboid-cross-section, solid-diamond cantilever and specially designed dual dampers of the Proteus D and their recommended vertical tracking forces (VTFs): 1.9gm for the Proteus, 2.05–2.07gm for the Proteus D.

I haven't heard the original Proteus since 2014, so it's difficult to precisely pin down the audible differences between it and the D, but I still feel that it was among the handful of best-performing cartridges I've heard—and, at $6000, a bargain (don't hit me!) compared to the far more expensive competition. However, when I compared the Proteus D with the Kuzma CAR-60, the Proteus D was the clear, diamond-cantilevered winner.

To Franc Kuzma's credit, his reaction to my review of the CAR-60, while not happy (how could it be?), was 100% adult. Accepting my opinions as just that, he added, "In Slovenia there is an old saying which roughly translates as '100 people will have 100 opinions.'"

In last month's column I noted that Kuzma's instructions recommended loading the CARs with ">100 ohms," which I found surprising, as the internal impedance of all low-output models was 6 ohms, which would indicate <100 ohms. It turns out the symbol used in the instruction sheet was the opposite of what was intended. So if you own a CAR, please try loading it with less than 100 ohms.

But because I used the current-amplification–based CH Precision P1/X1 phono stage, the loading should have been irrelevant. Scot Markwell, a spokesperson for Kuzma's US importer, Elite Audio Video Distribution, asked if I'd be willing to listen again, this time using a more traditional voltage-amplification–based phono preamplifier. I agreed. So back came the two CARs for another listen.

The Kuzma CARs reevaluated
While a subsequent e-mail from Franc Kuzma conceded that the CAR-60 should perform well into the CH Precision P1/X1's current-amplification input, I ran it into the P1/X1's voltage input and, using the CH-supplied test record, ascertained that the flattest response was produced with a loading of 70–100 ohms. So I listened that way, as well as into Ypsilon Electronics' VPS-100 Silver Edition phono preamp, using Ypsilon's MC-16L step-up transformer. I also listened again through one of the CH Precision's current-amplification inputs.

As the Transfiguration Proteus D was still installed in my Swedish Analog Technologies tonearm, I again compared it with the CAR-60 in Kuzma's 4Point arm—and, as the D was going back to the distributor, and to be thorough to a fault, I finally installed the CAR-60 in the SAT arm. I'd already recorded, at 24-bit/96kHz with the Proteus D, the Who's song "Bargain," from the Classic Records reissue of Who's Next, cut by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering (LP, Decca/Classic DL79182). After installing the CAR-60 in the SAT arm, I recorded the track again, which allowed me to A/B the two needle drops in real time, with no variable other than the cartridges. The things we do for love! By the time this column is printed, both 24/96 files of "Bargain" will be posted on AnalogPlanet.com for you to compare.

I used other records, too, including a 45rpm edition of Duke Ellington's Masterpieces by Ellington (Columbia Masterworks ML 4188/Analogue Productions AAPJ 4418-45)—which I also played for The New Yorker's David Denby in a New York audio shop, along with a variety of classical, jazz, and rock (footnote 2).

It was reassuring that the differences between the CARs that I heard in my listening for last month's column consistently reappeared in my listening for this month's. But I'm glad to have had another listen. While I stand by my observations of last month, I feel that I injected my personal tastes into my conclusions.

Preferences for specific cartridges are among the most personal and most strong that an audiophile can hold—even more so than for loudspeakers. I have a friend in this business who thinks that if it's not a Koetsu Coralstone, you're not hearing music. Others prefer the spherical-stylus Denon DL-103R, which can't possibly trace the information in the grooves with accuracy. Some people—I'm one of them—love the house sound of Lyras; others hate it. I love detail and resolution—but what I hear from Lyras as detail and high resolution, others hear as analytical and just plain unnatural.

I am also very much in favor of Ortofon's A90 and A95, with their Replicant styli—the shape for a playback stylus that's closest to that of a cutting stylus. I'm less enthusiastic about the smoother-sounding cartridges from My Sonic Lab, and thus about the Air-Tights as well—although, of course, these are top-shelf cartridges in terms of both design and execution, and the folks who love them do so absolutely.

So I'm not here to tell you which products to like, but how they sound. I wrote that both CARs were "real smoothies, and coherent from top to bottom within that smoothness and wholeness. But they sounded smooth without ever sounding soft—smooth like skating on ice." I'm sticking with that assessment. "The visual perspective was on the distant side, with small, finely drawn, delicate images. Transients were super-clean on top, delicately drawn on bottom." I'm sticking with that, too, along with: "Delicacy trumped muscularity in every item on my sonic checklist."

What I shouldn't have written was that without the recommended loading, the CARs' smoothness and freedom from "etch, edge and grain . . . prevented percussive transients on top and bottom from developing excitement-generating bite and textural grip." My "excitement" is someone else's ear-bleed. Rather, I should have written that the CAR-60's transient attacks were supple, its sustains generous, its decays precise. So let me try again: Tonally, the CAR-60 was as neutral-sounding a cartridge as you'll find. It was neither tipped up nor rolled off on top, and its bottom-end extension and resolution of low-level detail were what you should expect from a cartridge costing in excess of $10,000.

That said, I also must stick with my original conclusion: that regardless of phono preamp or gain circuitry, while the CAR-60 will be a great choice for all genres of acoustic music, and cast an airy, sensuous, luxurious sonic spell, its overall polite attacks produced, in the lower octaves, less than what I consider to be the amounts of slam and grip needed to effectively communicate rock music's muscular drive. I would write, and have written, similar things about many other cartridges.

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Footnote 1: Kuzma Ltd., Hotemaze 17/a, SI-4205 Preddvor, Slovenia. Tel: (386) 4-253-54-50. Fax: (386) 4-253-54-54. Web: www.kuzma.si. US distributor: Elite Audio Video Distribution, PO Box 93896, Los Angeles, CA 90093-0896. Tel: (323) 466-9694 x22. Fax: (323) 466-9825. Web: www.eliteavdist.com

Footnote 2: Read Denby's account of our encounter here.