SME III, the most elegant and beautiful tonearm in the world, and the finest and best looking design they ever did.
And the technically finest pivot arm ever created. The secret lies in damping, quite literally. Large kinda slightly loose yet very tightly coupled & azimuth adjustable headshell, very rigid & very light titanium-nitride arm wand, teak damped wand, fluid damping, ballast weights around pivot, and all those discontinuity points along the resonance path from headshell/wand to wand/bearing which intentionally is not the highest tolerances, it actually acts as damper. Brilliant design. Works just fine with lower compliance carts as well, simply add mass on headshell, 2 g or 4 g spacer provided.
After that SME went downhill.
SME III + SHURE Ultra 500 + ORACLE DELPHI MKII is a monstrous combination, the midrange especially is so ludicrously transparent that I still vividly remember that über detailed sound and in high register sweetness yet so powerful sound I experienced exactly thirty years ago. It was maestro Hendrix in Electric Ladyland and a cheap Dutch reissue but it opened a window to another, brighter world. The arriving UFO from distant space circling across the room to close my face was loud and BIG.
Moon, turns the tides gently gently away ..... And I never looked back.
And shortly after went in greater things, let my Hi-Fi specialist replace stock wires with very delicate silver, uninterrupted path from cart pins to RCA plugs and straight to preamp. It was 1991 and my Hi-Fi world was never the same. Revelation.
MuddyWaters, you surely, or shall I say shurely have a great taste : )
Enjoy your great cartridges and system.
And like you, I guess, I have always laughed at SME III haters.
End of story.
And the technically finest pivot arm ever created. The secret lies in damping, quite literally. Large kinda slightly loose yet very tightly coupled & azimuth adjustable headshell, very rigid & very light titanium-nitride arm wand, teak damped wand, fluid damping, ballast weights around pivot, and all those discontinuity points along the resonance path from headshell/wand to wand/bearing which intentionally is not the highest tolerances, it actually acts as damper. Brilliant design. Works just fine with lower compliance carts as well, simply add mass on headshell, 2 g or 4 g spacer provided.
After that SME went downhill.
SME III + SHURE Ultra 500 + ORACLE DELPHI MKII is a monstrous combination, the midrange especially is so ludicrously transparent that I still vividly remember that über detailed sound and in high register sweetness yet so powerful sound I experienced exactly thirty years ago. It was maestro Hendrix in Electric Ladyland and a cheap Dutch reissue but it opened a window to another, brighter world. The arriving UFO from distant space circling across the room to close my face was loud and BIG.
Moon, turns the tides gently gently away ..... And I never looked back.
And shortly after went in greater things, let my Hi-Fi specialist replace stock wires with very delicate silver, uninterrupted path from cart pins to RCA plugs and straight to preamp. It was 1991 and my Hi-Fi world was never the same. Revelation.
MuddyWaters, you surely, or shall I say shurely have a great taste : )
Enjoy your great cartridges and system.
And like you, I guess, I have always laughed at SME III haters.
End of story.