A true example of fine German engineering, their components 'stand for the.
Their Concept Turntable series is one of the first we recommend and its what we actually use in our office. Founded in 1978, Germanys Clearaudio offers some of the most refined, modern components in the audiophile market. There is slight wiggle room to rotate the cartridge in the SME headshell even though it has two mounting screw holds rather than slots. Clearaudio - Turntables / Preamps / Cartridges. One issue I found is that one must make sure the cantilever is parallel to the headshell edges when installing the cartridge in the headshell. It is still far better than using the cartridge in the headshell and also risking damage to the cantilever/cartridge during set up. However, with my vdH cartridges sounding best when the arm is raised in back, to get proper alignment, this places the jig at an angle where only the front edge hits the grid sheet. Just to be clear I'm a big fan of SME 30xx- R tonearms. I prefer the R version, for me it's a more solid sound and isn't limited in choice of cartridges like the standard Series II is. I find this tool works best when the armtube is close to level allowing the clear metal jig to lie flat on the grid sheet. For one thing the SME is a lot simpler than the Morch to setup and sonically it's more natural with better bass. That is, the two sides each flare out slightly toward the back, and the headshell edges are high above the grid plane, so your tool is much easier and accurate. This solves one problem I found with my original SME 3012R headshell: The sides are not perfectly parallel. I like the long straight sides that are parallel to each other for easy sighting and alignment. I am keen to hear from you, after all at the very least you will end up with a rewired (silver- copper/teflon insulation) standard arm. So if there is a guinea pig out there with a spare SME arm (with damaged armtube is ok), an understanding and experience of high(er) end systems, willing to give it a try, and most importantly give an honest opinion then please, please give me a shout. Now for my problem, I have never had the good fortune to own a high end setup, I do have good speakers and turntable but the rest of my system is somewhat budget.
The upgrade can be undone so the arm can go back to stock if required. I have since redesigned the tube to replace a standard 231.2mm arm tube, this with an effective mass of 10g.
However, the end results have I feel been fantastic and brings this arm bang up to date. After many a false start I finally came up with a carbon fibre arm tube with an overall length to suit my 222mm center, believe me finding the correct internal tube layout to control uniform effective mass per unit length (no just sticking mass on the headshell for me), resonance, damping and signal screening and all within a tight window of total effective mass takes time, skill and patience.
With such a good basis to work from I started to think about the weakness in the arm tube and how I could extend it's length to suit a 222mm centre. there are some weak points, in the internal wiring and the four way connector, but hey for the year it was designed not the worst I'm sure. The quality of every little detail is of the utmost highest standard, O.K. I am an Instrument Engineer by training, and reassessing this arm in detail all these years later, I started to understand why SME's capabilities have been described as, "the equal of anything made in Switzerland". About this same time I came across an article by Ken Kessler on the history of the SME 3009 arms, which caused me to dig out my long time unused SME, which I had purchased new in about 1977 and had, for many years previously, been used on a Thorens TD160. For a number of reasons I did not want to walk this path and started to look around. I guess the obvious first port of call would be a Rega, or one of the many variances of. A while back I had the need for a arm with a 222mm (pivot-spindle) distance to fit to a turntable I was working on.