The Cutting Edge

The Stogi S is a highly cost-effective, hydraulicallydampedunipivot tonearm that has the ability tounleash the strengths of top-tier cartridges.times what the arm does. It enables cartridgesto produce bass that is energetic,deeply extended, and yet tightly focused.For instance, near the opening of“Overture—Cotton Avenue” from JoniMitchell’s Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter[Asylum], Jaco Pastorius strikes a subterranean,thunderclap-like note on an openbass-guitar string, and the StogiS/Shelter combo captures everything thatnote has to offer, including its fierceattack, richly modulated envelope, andlong, slow decay that rings with sustainedlow-frequency energy. Other goodarm/cartridge pairs I’ve heard typicallycan’t produce bass like this—bass thathits with sledgehammer force, yet speakswith vox humana expressiveness.At midrange and treble frequencies,the Stogi S facilitates the cartridge’s preciseand invigorating retrieval of transientand harmonic details, while at thesame time fostering an overall soundMore on the StogiThe Stogi S arm is a simple yeteffective unipivot design witha downward-facing spike thatrests in a bearing cup whose pivotpoint is located in the plane of therecord, minimizing warp-induced wow.The bearing cup is positioned in thecenter of a basin that gets partiallyfilled with silicone-oil damping fluidupon which the understructure of thearm “floats.” The arm features twobrass counterweights slung beneatha small tail-shaft; users rotate one orboth of the eccentrically mountedweights for basic azimuth adjustments,or adjust a weighted trimscrewfor finer azimuth tuning. TheStogi S provides a simple anti-skatingmechanism that audibly improvescartridge tracking.CMthat is graceful and smooth. I attributethis elusive combination of detail andsmoothness to the Stogi S’s damping system,and it is pure magic. For me, it wasa revelation to revisit classic CTI jazzrecordings from the 1970s, such asFreddy Hubbard’s Red Clay or Jim Hall’sConcierto, and the Stabi S/Stogi S pairproved a perfect “time machine,”unlocking incredibly fine timbral andtextural details in those old records in away no analog rig from the ’70s couldhave done. Hubbard’s trumpet andHall’s guitar just sound so right throughthe Stogi S/Shelter pair, with detailspouring forth as from a natural spring,without any artificial edge enhancementto mar the presentation.Finally, we come to my personalfavorite of the Stogi S’s characteristics;namely, it ability to help cartridges createrock-solid images and spectacularlythree-dimensional soundstages. Wheresome otherwise good arm/cartridgecombos struggle to produce images thatstay focused or soundstages that breakfree from the speakers or the dimensionsof the listening room, the StogiS/Shelter pair makes both tasks lookeasy. I almost fell off my couch when Ifirst heard the huge soundstages theStogi S produced, and then experiencedthe illusion of the near-physical presenceof instruments and performersupon those stages.This quality proved especiallygripping on the Quartetto Italiano performanceof the Dvorák American StringQuartet in F, Op. 96 [Philips], wherethe voices of the individual instrumentsrang true, not just because timbres wereaccurately reproduced, but also becausethe sizes (and shapes) of the instrumentswere rendered with almostsculptural precision. The sense of beingtransported to the recording site wascompelling thanks to a myriad smallWWW.THEABSOLUTESOUND.COM 23