OMA’s K3 direct-drive turntable and custom Schröder tonearm
THIS ISSUE: Mikey reviews another exotic ’table that costs as much as a rather nice house, the OMA K3.
If you’re going to spend a year-plus in COVID lockdown, it doesn’t hurt to have a million dollars’ worth of turntables keeping you company, right? That’s been my good fortune. Sounds like a roomful, but it’s only three: the SAT XD1, the Air Force Zero, and the OMA K3 ($360,000).1
You’ll find this issue’s cover girl either strikingly beautiful or homely. Visitor reactions fall strongly into one of those two camps, with nothing in between. I love the looks. Whatever your opinion, the K3’s visual distinctiveness cannot be denied. The innards are equally unique.
Looking somewhat like the Guggenheim Museum topped by a heliport and a construction crane, the cosmetically finalized K3 arrived, coincidentally, in the afternoon of a day in which OMA’s Jonathan Weiss spent the morning at the actual Guggenheim Museum, installing an array of his OMA Fleetwood Line of loudspeakers in support of “Anthem,” artist, filmmaker, and MacArthur Grant recipient Wu Tsang’s new commission, conceived in collaboration with singer, composer, and transgender activist Beverly Glenn-Copeland.2
The production K3 replaced the cosmetically unfinished but intriguing prototype installed here last fall. The two units measure and sound identical, but Stereophile does not permit prototype reviews; hence the swap—though the word “swap” is inadequate to describe the drama and difficulty involved in lowering the prototype to the ground and hoisting the final curvaceous, slippery, 200-plus pound K3 atop the HRS rack. OMA manufactures a custom stand for the turntable, but space limitations—physical space, not column space—made it impossible to include it in the review.
A backstory worth telling
Much like the gestation of the Continuum Caliburn, the K3’s design development and construction resulted from an almost-seven-year international cooperative effort involving industriallevel manufacturing acumen and academic expertise. Auckland, New Zealand–based hydraulics engineer Richard Krebs led a group that also included a Bucknell University team of professors and graduate students from the departments of engineering and physics. Also readers), architect/industrial designer Ana Gugic, and of course Jonathan Weiss, who in 2006 founded Pennsylvania-based OMA, short for Oswalds Mill Audio.
