Not to be confused with an insect, a Black Widow spider is a type of poisonous arachnid, which means that, among other things, it has its skeleton outside of its body. Due to this creature’s cannibalistic mating habits, female serial killers who target their husbands have been called “Black Widows.”
It’s against that backdrop that one day, shortly after hearing the UPS driver’s lift gate come down in front of my home, I lugged inside five large, very heavy boxes that collectively held Adona Corporation’s flagship Zero GTX Black Widow component rack ($5,980, shown below with MoFi’s StudioDeck turntable and Aavik’s Forte 1 streaming amplifier/DAC).
Adona's Zero GTX Black Widow component rack.
Not lost on me was that a heavy component rack such as this could very well be deemed a reviewer killer. But nobody put a gun to my head when I agreed to review this rack for my website, The Listening Chair (review forthcoming). Further, I am well aware that one characteristic that rack manufacturers often aim for is high mass, which of course typically translates into a lot of weight.
Manufactured in Florida, Adona’s website states that the Black Widow rack’s design has been computer modeled and uses a liberal number of custom-machined and fabricated components. According to the website, the rack is hand-manufactured using premium-grade materials and is claimed to offer performance that exceeds other racks costing much more.
As I have written over the years, I find audio component rack design to be a fascinating, although often confusing topic for those like me without a materials science and engineering degree. While the above product details will have to suffice for this photo column, I will have to dig deeper for the review.
For now, I will just note that the Black Widow rack was extremely difficult to photograph. Due to the immense weight, I couldn’t move it to a place with good light. As if that was not enough, its shiny black stone shelves made focusing the camera a real chore. On a positive note, assembling the Black Widow and witnessing its design and build quality has me hoping that the sound of my audio system is about to get a lot better. Even better, I seem to be no worse for the wear.
X marks the spot: this is a seriously heavy-duty piece of equipment.
Hard to photograph, easy to live with.
The rack comes with dedicated isolation cones.
All photos courtesy of Howard Kneller.
Also note TLC’s growing TLC social media ecosystem, including its Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61556741638528) and group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/217745678009888), the latter where members from around the world show off their gear; plus its LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/howard-kneller/), Instagram (www.instagram.com/howardkneller/), Threads (www.threads.net/@howardkneller) and X (www.x.com/HowardKneller) pages.
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