Kondo SFz - E MC step-up transformer (silver)

With the SFz-E, Kondo brings the essence of his famous silver-wound SFz transformer into a simpler and more accessible design. The ‘E’ stands for ‘Essential’, but that certainly does not mean that Kondo has cut corners on the fundamental technology. At the heart of the design are the pure silver, multi-layer transformer windings developed by Kondo. These are combined with a large core that is hand-assembled from permalloy laminations just 100 μm thick. The aim is to minimise eddy current and hysteresis losses, thereby achieving a very wide frequency range with exceptionally low distortion. The multi-layer winding structure is designed to deliver a flat frequency response up to 100 kHz. Mechanically, too, Kondo has paid close attention to the faintest signals emerging from an MC cartridge. The transformers are housed in a permalloy casing, surrounded by a copper inner chassis for dual magnetic and electrostatic shielding. Special damping materials and feet also ensure mechanical decoupling. The SFz-E features separate Low and High inputs. The Low input is intended for MC cartridges with an internal impedance of 1 to 10 ohms and provides 34 dB of gain. The ‘High’ input is designed for cartridges with an impedance of 11 to 40 ohms and provides 20 dB of gain. This allows the SFz-E to be paired with a fairly wide range of high-quality MC cartridges. Compared to the standard SFz, Kondo has deliberately simplified the design. The SFz-E does not have a ground selector, nor does it come with the SFz’s fixed 1-metre Kondo Theme LS-41 silver output cable. With the SFz-E, you therefore choose the interconnect between the step-up transformer and the MM phono input yourself. The official European price list therefore describes it quite simply as the SFz, but without the NF cable.