In just a few years, J. Sikora has become a proud voice of Polish high-end audio manufactories, and its turntables and tonearms can be found in the upper echelon audio systems all over the world.
What makes J.Sikora special is how quickly they have found their way into the highly competitive analog segment of the audio industry. J.Sikora has years of experience in manufacturing parts to very high specifications and tolerances.
They are also experts in using different materials, that have been already profoundly implemented strategically at the critical points of their designs, both in turntables and tonearms.
Max Zirconium Series Tonearm
As you can read throughout the review, J. Sikora offers a unique, highly engaging, and factual rendition of the music. These results are not fortunate coincidences, but the result of painstakingly acquired practical experience and newly gained knowledge in this field.
The KV MAX is the ultimate expression of the renowned and award-winning KV12 tonearm series. As the world’s first Kevlar® tonearm, the KV12 has established itself as one of the finest tonearms in the world and has won many awards including the Mono & Stereo Highly Recommended Product Award.
The J.Skiora KV MAX tonearms build on the best aspects of the KV12 tonearms and take performance to an even higher level: the J.Sikora team has further developed its unique Kevlar® tonearm tube design by reducing its weight while increasing its rigidity. To further reduce resonance, the new, unique bearing is made of zirconium oxide. The new, improved damping guarantees maximum stabilization of the tonearm with unsurpassed tracking.
J.Sikora is renowned for its distinctive use of metals to reduce resonance in its tables. This approach has been extended to the KV MAX tonearms by replacing most of the aluminum elements of the arm with bronze, contributing to an increase in stability and a further reduction of resonances to an exceptional level.
This uncompromising design is complemented by the use of cables made of the purest copper, plated with 24-carat gold and specially manufactured for J.Sikora by Soyaton High-End Audio Cables.
Operational
Having already tested the J.Sikora KV12 tonearm, installation of the KV9 MAX Zirconium tonearm was a straightforward task.
The KV Max mounting height and the template for the mounting holes were identical to Kuzma’s specifications, and I already had the matching tonearm base, which fitted perfectly.
There’s just something fundamentally right about the way the KV9 MAX Zirconium handles the elementals of the music, no matter what cartridge I’ve tried, and I’ve tested a variety of them including Lyra Atlas Lambda, X-quisite VORO, Zyx Ultimate Exceed Astro, HANA Umami Blue, Murasakino Sumile Mono and Gold Note Tuscany Gold, to name a few.
Yes, an extensive selection of pick-ups, but I felt it was an obligatory task to decode how well the KV9 MAX performs, and as you’ll discover in the following music section, the J.Sikora flagship Zirconium tonearm demonstrated to be an excellent tracker and via medium, no matter what music genre was played.
The Music
Gary Karr, Harmon Lewis – Songs Of Prayer
The duo Karr and Lewis need no special introduction to audiophile music lovers. The Adagio D’Albinoni is certainly a more desirable collector’s item, but Songs Of Prayer is no less enticing for delving into the deeper realms of haunting decays, delays, and natural reverberation of double bass and organ, with captivating timbre, tone, and color to start with.
Songs Of Prayer by Gary Karr and Harmon Lewis’s sacred yet haunting, almost poignant narrative that explores the echoes of the past is sublime, and if everything is set up faultlessly, the music should bypass the sensual gatekeepers and go straight to the soul.
Due to steady tracking, the J.Sikora KV9 MAX Zirconium tonearm furnished the celestial aura of Songs Of Prayer remarkably well, undoubtedly due to its capability to dig deeper into the grooves with its smooth lateral movement.
J.Sikora KV9 MAX Zirconium tonearm expertly escaped any traits of mediocrity and operated beyond stoic experience, too often associated with not necessarily cheaper, but not so well executed and balanced tonearms.
This was also possible due to the KV9 MAX’s ability of unique playful interaction with the cartridge and turntable, which opened up a deeper interaction with the music, that is normally associated with pricer tonearms.
Lee Morgan – The Sidewinder
Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder has a special place in my jazz record pantheon for several reasons. Morgan may not have the fame of Davis and some other better-known trumpeters, but his distinctive virtuosity and sense of tone and melody are unique and his playing is not to be missed.
The Sidewinder can sound like a big blur of notes too quickly if the analog front end is not set u properly, but from the first notes, the J.Sikora KV9 MAX Zirconium tonearm shows its impeccable ability to ably track the depths of the black grooves and bring out the subtleties that fetch Morgan’s trumpet playing to life, always keeping to tempos and presenting the music with natural clarity.
The KV9 MAX swept in tune with the music, lending sonic elegance and a vibrant, life-like timbre to the reproduction.
The J.Sikora flagship tonearm effortlessly fetched an impressive array of sonic intricacies, connecting them with higher-order acoustic nodes and focus points, as well as rendering lightning-fast attacks, all combined presenting the music with a much broader brushstroke as expected, allowing for more immersive listening and a greater expansion of the subtleties of instrumental expression.
K&D – 1995
Kruder & Dorfmeister, aka Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister, an Austrian icons, and masters of their craft 1995 album is another of the almost lost recordings.
There are so many underpinnings in this captivating kaleidoscopic, jazzy, atmospheric downtempo ambient trip-hop that are always valuable when evaluating any turntable paraphernalia.
With the J.Sikora KV9 MAX Zirconium tonearm riding the grooves of the halcyon-like hypnotic trip-hop rhythms and loops, it felt like every musical molecule was in place and deep trance alike immersion was not only touched but achieved.
The top-of-the-line J.Sikora tonearm instantly locked and loaded with hypnotic grooves, intrinsic tones, and dub-style lasting delays and echoes spread freely throughout the sonic sphere.
KV9 MAX Zirconium avoided any of the resonant peaks that not-so-few tonearm regardless of the price contend with when it comes to factual fidelity reproduction.
In contrast, the KV9 MAX Zirconium simply sucks you into the K & D aural vacuum and acts like a teleporter and a time capsule.
Rafael Kubelík & Boston Symphony Orchestra Bedřich Smetana: Ma Mlást
I have bought several Deutsche Grammophon Original Source recordings, and Ma Vlást with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kubelík is one of the favored few. This legendary recording was remastered and edited by the Berliner Studios keeping it completely analog (AAA), and like others sourced from the original tapes.
Ma Vlást offers a variety of sonic imagery, scenes, and soundscapes that are beautifully interpreted and have a particular vitality that requires a top-of-the-line analog system to bypass any distortion because if the reproduction deviates just a little from the optimum, the recording can quickly dissolve into brittle areas.
With KV9 MAX Zirconium, the orchestra’s energy was rendered passionately and colorfully, rich in detail, and sonic layers were prominent but not tonally overdriven.
With the J.Skora KV9 tonearm, even at a faster pace, the musical scenery depicted the instruments factually, intertwining them seamlessly, and even with quiet passages that were neither suppressed nor hushed.
It is rare to get to the heart of the juxtaposition and uniqueness of the orchestra and the instruments, but the J.Sikora KV9 MAX Zirconium clearly articulated both apparent antipodes.
No matter how convoluted, the tonearm rendered the orchestra with authority and control, without deviating in its dynamic impact or progression.
On numerous occasions, I got goosebumps when rapid orchestral outbursts happened all at once erupting into the energetic, harmonic whole, just as one experiences in real life. The same real-to-life momentum was apparent with gently sweeping arpeggios, crescendos, and harmonic progressions.
The perception of the space between the pitches, where the music gets its richness is of utmost importance and J.Sikora KV9 MAX Zirconium deals with these intervals in a fundamentally different way, not leaving anything to a chance.
The Conclusion
The ever-going, but not exactly necessary rivalry between digital and analog is still in full swing and will probably remain so permanently. With all the advances on both sides in recent years, they are not exactly antipodes as there are great advantages on both sides, yet there is something that still more often favors analog. Exemplary stand-outs excluded!
There are many suppositions and speculations about the differences, and it might have something to do with the gaps between zeros and ones, where supposedly there is nothing in between, and in contrast, in analog, there is a complete microcosmos going on all the time.
The tonearm is all about physics and math and how they are implemented to carry the signal and pass it on to the active follow-up components in the signal chain without changing it.
The J.Sikora KV9 MAX Zirconium tonearm is a clear and great representative of handling what seems simple but is in reality a convolution dynamism of the analog domain, and it’s quite different from what happens on the digital side.
The more the components are willing to reveal these micro and macro changes, the more the listener is drawn into the music, and during my evaluation, the KV9 MAX Zirconium tonearm has always been at the forefront of sound and music. That combined is quite a rare thing and worthy of all the accolades.
The J.Sikora tonearm has proven to be in sync with the music on a variety of musical pieces, seamlessly transmitting the transients and energy of the music, acting transparently, and allowing even the smallest movements to shine through.
The infinite resolution of analog hides so much information and amazingly, analog playback still pushes forward the bar year after year.
In the analog domain, there are a million variables to deal with, and especially with tonearms, adding something extra to the hardware is certainly not welcome.
Our auditory receptors are super-sensitive to anything that happens to evolve in sound, and this keeps us open to the changes and keeps us in the loop. The fragile signal from the cartridge is subject to so many factors that how the tonearm deals with fluctuations is crucial.
This is where the good tonearm differs from the mediocre and this is one of the virtues of the J.Sikora tonearm.
The KV9 MAX Zirconium manages to deliver the music as a continuous, unbroken stream and not create the phenomenon of beat frequencies.
The J.Sikora KV9 MAX Zirconium tonearm feathered the music without focusing on a single detail or denoting the analog front-end balance system with its geometry. The KV9 MAX offers outstanding control over transients that go beyond the usual norms and is proof that analog can never be considered a static realm.
The J.Sikora tonearm has proven to be a natural fit for the Dohmann Helix turntable, which delves deeper into the mysteries of analog and seeks to delve deeper into musical places than expected. Another virtue worthy of the highlight.
KV9 MAX Zirconium tonearm comes with the unique savoir-être, acts like a sonic chameleon, has excellent transparency, and is the product of experience and not conjecture or guesswork.
All of these things that happen in the analog realm are a sum of many reliable parts, where every tiny, sometimes quark-like detail is important to the final result. J.Sikora operates very differently from the norm and contributes to a unique dynamic where the music is the only thing you pay attention to. I am more than happy to honor the KV9 MAX Zirconium tonearm with the 2024 Mono & Stereo Upper Echelon Award.
The KV9 MAX Zirconium is proof that analog is not the relic of the past, sacrificed on the altar of contemporary, push-button fast (but bitter aftertaste hard-hitting) consumerism.
The KV9 MAX Zirconium tonearm is not a tribute to a bygone era, but a modern analog product designed from the ground up to work seamlessly day in and day out, without causing distraction or involving a forte self-signature. Something I can not say about many tonearms, and that includes some of the self-proclaimed esoterics and exotics. ❖
Price
- KV9 Max: 10,000 EUR
- KV12 Max: 12,500 EUR
Technical specifications
KV MAX 12 Tonearm Technical Specifications
- Available finishes: natural yellow and lacquered black matte
- Oil-damped unipivot
- Mass: 8.82 oz / 250 g
- VTA mass: 7.9 oz / 225 g
- Effective length: 12” / 304.8 mm
- Mounting distance: 11.5” / 291 mm
- Effective mass: 0.42 oz / 12.5 g
- Wiring: 24K Gold plated 6N OCC Copper
KV MAX 9 Tonearm Technical Specifications
- Available finishes: natural yellow and lacquered black matte
- Oil-damped unipivot
- Mass: 8.64 oz / 245 g
- VTA mass: 7.9 oz / 225 g
- Effective length: 9” / 228.6 mm
- Mounting distance: 8.35” / 212 mm
- Effective mass: 0.46 oz / 10.7 g
- Wiring: 24K Gold plated 6N OCC Copper
Contact
J.Sikora
ul.Poligonowa 41
20-817 Lublin
Poland
Tel: +48 501 236 108
E-mail: info@jsikora.pl
Web: www.jsikora.pl