SME 3009 Tonearm rewire

Thanks Dover, excellent diagnostic instructions. I will attempt them myself for sure. Might try the fix myself as well depending on the problem I find. 
 

Thanks for your help. 

@esky

Honestly it is not a great arm. Only really suitable for high compliance cartridges, unless you have the 3009R which has a stainless steel arm tube and has a higher effective mass.

My advice would be to simply re-solder all the connections - you need to remove all the old solder first and then re-solder with new solder. You might find that the earthing is the issue - there is an earth wire running from the 4 pin bracket to the arm-tube ( inside ) that may be broken - you can use a multimeter to check this.

The other possibility is a dicky joint in the cable from arm to phono - you can test this by using a multimeter to test continuity by removing the arm cable and wriggling the connectors at each end with a multimeter checking continuity.

Any technician should be able to do this in a few minutes if you can’t do it yourself.

A good source for technicians is to check out the professional sound companies who supply DJ equipment - they have tech’s to maintain DJ decks etc and usually are very competent.

Another simple test to see if it is earthing is to run a wire from your phono earth and    use the other end as a probe to touch the arm at various points and see if the hum disappears.

I have an intermittent hum at more than 5 out of ten volume that seems to go away when I move the 4 pin connector at the bottom of the arm assembly. The ground connection on the side of the connector also seems to be a problem. That’s why I was looking into the one piece rewire end to end. 

@esky 

What difficulties are you having exactly ?

I have rewired a few SME's.

The reason I was asking is I’m having intermittent difficulties with the 4 pin connector at the base of the arm. 

Alright, thanks. 

Don't waste money on that. Ortofon wire there is the best