Specs & Pricing

The Cutting Edge
whatever else it rests on. Unlike the Kuzma,
the Walker can be leveled via adjustments to
the pressure in its feet, and since it has its own
built-in air-suspension system, you will not
need to buy a Vibraplane—something to keep
in mind when you consider the considerable
difference in price between it and the Stabi
XL.
The Walker does have a rectangular
plinth—a 165-pound composite of crushed
marble, epoxy resin, and lead, finished in a
piano-black gel-coat. Unlike the Kuzma, the
Walker does not use a conventional ball-andthrust-plate
bearing. Instead, its platter, like
its tonearm, rides on air. A ten-inch-diameter
air-bearing subplatter (the largest yet made
for a turntable) and its attendant plumbing
are fitted into a large hole in the center of the
plinth. A 75-pound, fully-sealed lead-platter
is then placed (very carefully) onto this airbearing
subplatter. Pressurized air routed
from reservoirs in the Walker’s huge, filtered
(for moisture, dust, and oil) air-supply box is
sent through three low-pressure, hand-lapped
jets in the air-bearing subplatter, lifting the
massive lead platter and allowing it to rotate
frictionlessly. Because of the size of the airbearing,
it only takes 1.2psi to lift the platter. 2
Drive to the Walker ’table is supplied by
a single, outboard, low-torque, instrumentgrade,
ball-bearing AC motor, encased in
a marble-epoxy-lead box of its own and
mounted on Walker Valid Points (giant brass
tiptoes). The motor sits in a brass cradle that
Both arms trace the
same straight line
across the LP, why
then do they sound
so different
allows you to tension the silk belt that runs
from the pulley to the platter and is controlled
by Walker’s Ultimate Motor Controller—an
outboard device that filters AC in addition to
stabilizing speed.
The turntables—with their diverse
suspensions, bearings, drives, materials, and
masses—are sufficiently different to account
for some of the dissimilarities in the way the
Kuzma and Walker
sound. But, then,
their tangential airbearing
arms are also
different.
The Kuzma Air
Line is what might
be called a “traveling air bearing,” in that its
sleeve-like bearing glides (with the tonearm,
which is attached to it) on a cushion of air
along a fixed, polished, large-diameter spindle.
The Walker is what might be called a “fixed
air bearing,” in that the bearing does not move
along a large-diameter spindle; rather, a smalldiameter
spindle (to which the tonearm is
attached) moves, on a minute cushion of air,
through a long, pressurized hole in the bearing
itself.
Perforce, the Kuzma Air Line’s traveling
bearing is considerably shorter than Walker’s
fixed bearing—just two inches across. Lined
on the inside with a highly porous material and
supplied with air from an outboard pump at
extremely high pressures (65psi), the bearing,
says its designer Franc Kuzma, is so stiff that
it’s virtually immune to mistracking caused by
106 December 2006 The Absolute Sound