Hailing from Hong Kong, Shozy has been very active and has been releasing a handful of products in every price segment within a year. Starting from collaboration with Neo for Neo CP 3 and BG5 in September last year to Pola39 in collaboration with AAW few months ago they have released 7 earphones within a year.
I have reviewed the original Pola few days ago. https://theheadphonelist.com/electrostatic-magic/
It is one of the best earphones in its price range and is worthy of a TOTL title. It has fantastic amount of details and the stage is bigger than most of the competitors. The W shaped sound signature delivers very good amount of bass, mid range clarity and treble energy.
Since its inception, Pola has been their Flagship, which is now replaced with a revision, Pola39. To be made in limited quantities it improves over the original Pola in every aspect. It is smaller, it looks better and now all the tuning flaws of the Pola has been addressed with the Pola39.
It has exactly same setup as the Pola, one dynamic driver with two electrostatic drivers. The only difference being the dynamic driver is now a 10mm unit instead of 13mm unit used in the original.
Available in both custom and universal versions it is priced at $950 for universal and $1050 for custom version. It now has mother of pearl back plates and now ships with a beautiful looking wooden Symphonym case.
You can get one for yourself from these links:-
http://www.shozy-hk.com/hibiki-1/pola-39-electrostatic-iem
POLA39
What you are getting inside the box:-
The Pola39 comes in a gift box type case. It has the same faux leather coating on it. It looks classy. Upon opening the flap Symphonym greets us with “Augmented with SYMPHONYM select cast wire”. There is pouch on the other side which has a Symphonym owner’s privilege card in it.
Opening the greetings flap the first thing that catches the eye is the Beautiful looking Null Audio 48″ Symphonym Tiburon UP-OCC Copper Litz 4-wire cable carry case, It is a handcrafted wooden carry case made of African Blackwood. It is nicely polished and finishing is very good. The case only has the cable inside it.
What is easy to miss is an informative card tucked inside a netted pouch on the other side which has information about the Pola39’s tuning and the internals it has. Upon removing the “Mechanics of Sound” paper cover we finally see the earpieces. Removing the foam pad which is holding the earpieces, there is a smaller paper box which contains an airline adapter, a 6.5mm adapter and 6 pair of tips.
Here are the features of the Pola39:-
2nd generation electrostatic
iem/ciem – POLA39
Featuring:-
– ACG genre optimized tuning with lush mids, fast and deep bass impact and
extremely transparent treble
– New fast, responsive proprietary 10 mm dynamic driver + DUAL electrostatic
drivers
– Smaller housing than POLA to fit more ears
– New venting design
– New stainless-steel nozzle
– Mother of pearl face-plate
– Special color theme
– Symphonym OCC copper cables
– Premium leather case / collection box
Early Impression:-
What impressed me the most is that Shozy didn’t try to change the setup. The Dynamic driver and Dual Electrostatic driver setup with TrueXcross 2 way crossover is retained. They just have tuned it better this time compared to the original. They changed the dynamic driver to a smaller unit to shed a few mm from its overall size to fit smaller ears. The change in size is not significant though.
Shozy took inputs from the reviewer community and tuned the successor accordingly. All the complains with the original has been resolved with the Pola39 with a different sound signature altogether. A departure from the W shaped signature of the original, it now doesn’t lack energy with lower mid range and lower treble region. There are no sharper or thinner notes anymore. Bass has improved with a more rounded body and better rumble, mid range is now more leveled with rest of the spectrum. The overall size of the bass is a bit smaller which helps to keep things tighter. Treble has similar extension and now have better (more even) notes body. The overall stage size has been retained.
The original Pola used to be aggressive with notes presentation. Notes were a bit uneven with body and were sharper at undesirable parts of the spectrum. The Pola39 now has calmer, smoother notes with a more neutral tonality. It doesn’t have any type of aggressive nature with it.
All in all the Pola39 is a clear improvement over the original in the departments of tonality, sound signature and presentation. It now is more mature with the tuning and delivers more polished notes.
What hasn’t changed is the hunger for power. The Pola39 needs a lot of driving power. It just cannot be driven out of mobile devices to its fullest.
I will go in more details in my in-depth review which will be up in few weeks.
