Sorane tonearm

A beautiful meeting between IT Industry and Sorane (Abis)

A beautiful meeting between Youtek and Katsuaki Ishiyama-san, founder of IT Industry, about ten years ago in order to develop Sorane ( Space Sound in Japanese, "宙音"...) Abis being the former of Sorane renamed in 2017. The marketing of the tone arms started at the end of 2013,

Sorane/ Entirely handmade and assembled by craftsmen

Since the company's inception in 1974, Katsuaki Ishiyama-san has gained expertise in designing and developing various tone arms as well as other analogue equipment, made entirely by hand and assembled by craftsmen, he believes that only the human hand can make very careful adjustments to analogue gears.

They also use a CNC milling machine in the factory for the production of the basic parts, but the craftsmen are still involved in hand-fitting the many parts that are in contact with each other.

Common features

Gimbal designs provide excellent bass, dynamics and imaging, as well as unique azimuthal stability (the biggest problem with unipivots).

There is antiskating to avoid balancing problems.

There are removable shells to allow for quick cartridge changes, the adoption of shells of different masses (to help modify the effective mass of the arms and cartridges), and the ability to mount the cartridges in a well-lit area, in a safe and convenient manner.

They are machined and assembled by hand by skilled Japanese craftsmen. This highly precise and delicate hand assembly differentiates Sorane/Abis tone arms from similar mass-produced Japanese tone arms. Standard quality tone arms produced in large quantities are manufactured by die-casting and semi-automatic assembly processes to keep production costs low.

Skilled manual assembly involves measurement and hand fitting to produce an optimum interface between the machined surfaces. Once complete, the fit between each part is ideal and fulfils the conditions necessary for vibration-free and noise-free reproduction of analogue sound.

Most importantly, the key to the quality of a tone arm is an extremely sensitive and delicate movement, for which the bearings are a determining factor.

As far as the sound reproduced by Sorane tone arms is concerned:

The designer is convinced that you will get a precise and clean sound, which can only be achieved with handmade tone arms, but at a reasonable manufacturing price.

In particular, the SA-1.2 will produce rich, tight bass, thanks to the extremely rigid rectangular arm shape.

In the SA-1.2, two sets of thin radial bearings are installed both horizontally and vertically (another small bearing at the tone arm). This gives audiophiles smooth tone arm operation, longer life, better consistency and also better ability to track distorted vinyl.

The same type of radial bearing used in the SA-1.2 for horizontal movement is also used for the TA-1 and TA-1L, while a pivot bearing is used for vertical movement (it is still a bearing, but the end of the bearing shaft is cone-shaped, and requires very careful assembly and adjustment).

Sorane(Abis) / TA, SA series Tonearm Specification