Let's assume that in going from 9" to 11" effective mass increases roughly proportionally or by about 20%. This is not entirely accurate, but it's ballpark-reasonable. Then at 11", to keep resonance where Franc now recommends it, the compliance guidelines would simply become ~21 or lower instead of 25 or lower. Would this eliminate a wide swath of cartridge options? Not to my knowledge. But, the shorter the arm, the more inherent rigidity in the arm regardless of materials. I suspect the Safir is Kuzma's response to the SAT, also 9" and also of high effective mass. The SAT designer's stated goals were high rigidity and damping. He never published effective mass, if I recall. But the Safir has seemingly followed suit. I think we should actually be impressed by Safir's MSRP, at least in a relative sense. As for "zero reference" Franc described it clearly and I don't think we need to redefine it here. And the high end of the acceptable resonance range is not important when you're dealing with >60g effective mass.