I was rocking out in the DeVore Fidelity/Tone Imports room, listening to Polly Jean Harvey. In the midst of the hurly-burly of CES, I was feeling no pain. "I love the way you guys decided to set your Silver Diamondback References up assymetrically," I told JDV.

"It's the only way we could get the separation we needed," said John DeVore. "Those things," he pointed at Tone Imports' EMT TSD cartridge ($2200), the Tone EMT 997 "Banana" tonearm ($4495) and the monophonic Sentech EQ10 phono curve equalizers ($3000/each), "throw such a huge soundstage, we just couldn't do it with the Silverbacks closer together.

The EMT 997 now comes with SME or Ortofon A mounts.

Old-school analog lovers have long been hipped to the pleasures of "long-throw" tonearms—the EMT 997 made a believer out of me.