Review: Shozy & AAW POLA39

Shozy Pola 39

Build Quality & Design

 

As we’ve reported before when we reviewed Shozy and AAW units, the build quality is really good. The last few years the whole sector has immensely improved when it comes to build quality and you just can’t afford to deliver crap anymore when you’re charging a few hundred USD/€ for an IEM.

The custom shells show no flaws and the internal construction is perfectly symmetric. The canals are short and nicely rounded. That combined with the small size of the shell make these monitors very comfortable. The fit is comfortably flush, yet the seal is always intact.

The connecters on POLA39 are recessed but they sit perfectly in the shell’s body. Design-wise Shozy opted for the mother of pearl faceplate and I’m very happy with that. The faceplate in combination with the green-blueish shell colour simply works very well and POLA39 is really beautiful.

The nit-picker in me could report that there’s a slightly sharp edge on the right face-plate closing, but it’s only noticeable with your fingers, not in your ears. So all-in-all a really nice package.

Acessories & Cable

POLA39 comes in a pretty AAW leather like box and together with the monitors you get a series of accessories:

  • 48″ Symphonym Tiburon UPOCC Copper Litz 4-wire cable
  • Wooden Symphonym Carrying Case
  • Owner’s Club Card
  • Cleaning Cloth & tool
  • Flight & 1/4″ adapter
  • Assorted Ear Tips (3 sets of silicone and 2 sets of foam)
  • 1 Year Limited Warranty

POLA39 of course comes with a replaceable cable and I have to say that the stock (aftermarket) cable is both well built, beautiful looking and excellent sounding. This is a premium cable that I for sure will use with my other monitors. This isn’t just another boring standard cable as we so often see.

The POLA and POLA39 cable actually is a Symphonym Tiburon UPOCC Copper Litz 4-wire cable and as this IEM is so focused on higher mids and treble, I can see why they have opted for a copper composite.

This Tiburon UP-OCC Cryo Copper Headphone/IEM Cable utilizes the specially made Ultra-Pure Ohno Continuous Casting with amazing fine strands of copper conductors. It is 4 wire cross-braided to minimize cross interference and capsulated with ultra-flexible and glossy clear jacket. The wiring underwent cryogenic treatment to further reduce residual stress, resistance and enhance music signal transmission.

Tiburon employs a staggered wiring layout with individually enameled asymmetrical regular and denser strands. Such construction coupled with premier 10% silver solder delivers a full-bodied sound with distinctive layer separation.

Cable Specifications:

Wire: 26AWG UPOCC Litz
Length: 1.2 meter or 48 inches
Pin contact: 99.9% gold hard plating over brass, insulated in clear thermal plastics
Hardware: Symphonym TM Quest Rhodium plated Copper Series
Hardware Sleeve: Carbon Fibre
Soldering: 10% Silver Solder
Weight: 30g

Fit, Comfort and Isolation

The POLA39’s body is very small in size and the canals are very short (2 sound tubes). One of the goals of POLA39 was to make the monitor’s body smaller and Shozy and AAW have succeeded in doing just that. As said, my POLA39 version is a custom one and it is very small for a CIEM. The canals are also short but the fit and thus the comfort is exemplary. It’s a comfy, flush kind of fit but the seal is always there, so the POLA39 is always delivering the best possible build quality.

Isolation wise this POLA39 performs as every custom monitor should. Once you’re used to the comfort and sound isolation of a custom IEM, it’s very hard going back to a silicon tip universal IEM. I fully recommend the custom version of the POLA39, though our original universal POLA sample scored pretty well when it came to isolation.

The part on sound starts on page three of the review! Click here.

4.5/5 - (30 votes)
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Lieven is living in Europe and he's the leader of the gang. He's running Headfonia as a side project next to his full time day job in Digital Marketing & Consultancy. He's a big fan of tube amps and custom inear monitors and has published hundreds of product reviews over the years.

2 Comments

  • Reply December 5, 2020

    TU

    I’ve heard these, I don’t understand all these superlatives from the author, to me they sounded extremely dark and muddled. Nice midrange but the treble was so understated it was distracting.

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