TA-SF9R is a complete rethink of what a tonearm should be.
The revolutionary design in a familiar easy to use shape.
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What Makes Our Tonearms Better?
  • Strength

    High rigidity is the single best prediction of great audio performance in tonearms and headshells.

    Our measurements consistently support that.
  • Low resonances
    (but no elastic damping)
    Tonearm's resonances can reach up to 0.5G! They are clearly audible. Removing resonances removes distortion, coloration, ringing and sibilance.

    Elastic damping doesn't magically "erase" resonances. It stores, transforms and releases the energy back, killing the sonics.
  • Quality of Motion
    The bearings ring. The bearings chatter. The bearings stick and then slap. This is heard as grain, and impairs the tracking performance.

    We designed our tonearm around radically different bearings. How different? A video is surely worth a 1000 words.
Radically Different Design:
Flexure Pivot Horizontal Bearing
Monolithic flexure pivots are almost a hundred times more expensive than the usual rolling bearings. For that, you get amazing advantages:

  • Zero starting torque/no stiction
  • No bearing chatter
  • Great tracking of warps
  • Less inner groove distortion
  • Lasts forever — no servicing, no lubrication
  • Not influenced by temperature/humidity/dust/age
  • Easy to replace if broken
What does a flexure bearing sound like? Smooth! Once you experience a tonearm that is free of bearing chatter, you will recognize the chatter's sonic signature in other designs.
Steel Arm Tube
Based on a large study of arm tube materials, we chose a steel tube with 0.5mm wall thickness.

  • High bending resistance: 3 times higher than aluminium, 2 times higher than titanium of the same mass
  • Low energy storage

Why is steel seldom used in today's tonearms? It's not possible to simply replace an aluminium or titanium arm tube with a steel one. A whole new design is called for.
Widely Spaced Vertical Hybrid Ceramic Bearings
We did a study of vertical bearings's influence on sound, and chose hybrid ceramic rolling bearings for the task:

  • Better strength and precision
  • Less chatter compared to closely spaced bearings
  • Low starting torque/stiction
  • Better resolution
  • Sharper dynamics
  • Better sibilance control
  • Less inner groove distortion
  • Need no servicing or lubrication
Clamping Plinth Mounts
For tightest plinth attachment possible. They give:

  • Better mounting precision
  • Ease of adjustment
  • Better plinth coupling

Clamping mounts are quite expensive to make. This is probably why most other tonearms are held by imprecise and fiddly set screws instead.
Magnetic Antiskating
Magnetic antiskating has zero stiction.

It would be a real shame to spend so much effort (and money) on our beautiful bearings, and then ruin their performance with a weight on a pulley. Or with a sliding lever.

Our magnetic antiskating is calibrated and uniform—the biasing force remains the same from the outer to the inner grooves.
Custom Headshell Connector
To fully preserve the mechanical performance of both our unique ceramic headshell and the armtube, we designed our own connector:

  • Steel load-bearing part; aluminium alloy locking collar
  • Press-fitted into an armtube
  • Spring loaded, gold plated contact pins
  • Nylon isolator

Radically Easy to Use
High performance tonearms are often hard to set up and require tools to do so. We made ours as easy to use as any mass market tonearm—all while preserving the performance.
  • Soft dampened action
  • Height adjustable with a set screw
  • Column clamp is tightened and released with a 3mm hex key
  • VTA thumbwheel for repeatable adjustment (can be removed if not needed)
  • Numbers correspond to downforce setting
Tonearm lift
Vertical adjustment
Antiskating setting wheel
Precision headshell connector
  • Clockwise to tighten
  • Counterclockwise to release
Azimuth adjustment
  • Unscrew to adjust, tighten to set
  • Azimuth marker to visually check the setting
Screw-on counterweight
  • Rotate to adjust downforce
  • No set screws, no thumb screws
  • Helpful 0.5 gram (quarter turn) marks
  • Additional counterweight simply slides in (or out)
Arm rest
  • Easy friction lock
  • No moving parts
Simple and Effective Alignment Gauge
To align your cartridge, with most other tonearms you need a protractor. It is fiddly, imprecise, hard to use, and puts your valuable cartridge or stylus at risk of damage.

TA-SF9R comes with a precise alignment gauge. It's easy to set up your cartridge exactly right in minutes. Even away from your turntable, at a comfortable well lit desk.
Specifications
Measurements
Here's a comparison with the "standard" removeable headshell tonearm, the Jelco SA-750D/Jelco HS-25 combination.

The accelerometer is attached to the top front of the headshell, and the vertically modulated 0 to 20 kHz sweep recording is played. The output from the accelerometer is conditioned, amplified and converted to g. We're keeping our tradition of using the Audio Technica AT7V cartridge for the vibration measurements.
Owner's Manual Download
Terms and Conditions
  • Shipping
    We will ship your purchase worldwide from Klosterneuburg, Austria. Shipping and handling is at cost.

    If you are outside the EU, we cannot promise that you will or will not have to pay your country's import taxes and duties.
  • Returns
    If you aren't satisfied with your purchase for any reason whatsoever we will gladly take it back within 40 days from the date of delivery.

    There is no charge for restocking If you return all items in the original packaging. If you are in the EU we will cover the return shipment costs.
  • 1 Year Warranty
    We will replace anything you bought from us free of charge if it fails due to manufacturing defects within 1 year from the date of delivery.
  • Safe and Secure
    We will keep your data as secure as we can and will not do anything with it without first getting a permission from you. If you don't want us to store your data any more (for example, your email address), just let us know and we will delete it straight away.

    We would never sell your details to any marketer. Period, no exceptions.
  • Quality Engineering
    We only offer things that we have designed ourselves, and that are manufactured to our specifications under our control.

    We do not re-badge someone else's products to sell them as our own.
  • Real People, Real Opinion
    All product endorsements you see on our site and in our advertising are from real people who enjoy their Korf Audio products.

    Korf Audio would not exist without free exchange of sincere opinion on the internet. We do not post any promotional content pretending to be a personal opinion on any public forum.


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