Just sharing my thoughts here at this late thread date on the overall topic, as owner of an SME 20/2 model with the SME V arm and a Lyra Skala cartridge - I absolutely love it! And yes, I've heard other high-end tables in high-end systems. When I hear about how dead or tame these tables sound to others, I shake my head in disbelief- and that's as someone who's owned a Rega table plus a Linn LP-12 (neither known for 'deadness'), and has heard other ones for the sake of comparison.
But this is not a post about how great I think SMEs are. It's that one has to be wary of 'received audio wisdom' in general, without testing against reasonable skepticism and especially personal experience. One bit of 'received wisdom' I heard before I bought my SME years ago was that it was really a table for classical music lovers (the founder was a huge fan of opera). While classical listening is about half of my overall listening, the real revelation for me once I had my table was on the rock and jazz side of things- particularly jazz, which the table really brought to life in my experience. So- that notion about the SME turned out for me to be a bit misleading in its emphasis.
Overall, though, no one can tell someone else which high-end table is best for them. Not only do tastes differ, but the rest of the system, the listening room, perhaps even the genres of music favored really affect the subjective listening experience- often radically so. I love the rest of my system, but have heard various components of it sound lesser or even 'dead' elsewhere (in other setups), and imagine my SME setup could sound 'dead' in certain systems, and so have questions about just how reliably others who slam SMEs or their worthy competitors have made their own comparisons. It's possible that some people slamming certain table setups have not even reasonably optimized them in terms of setup or isolation or whatever, right? Plus, obviously cartridges make a huge difference, and I wonder how many people making comparisons between table lines have heard compared models using identical cartridges. So- IMO a lot of people who slam certain 'table lines simply ignore the relative degree of these factors because such individuals are so invested in their purchasing decisions plus their overall conceptualizations that they become insecure or overconfident in their outlook and respond accordingly.
SME, AMG, Technics, VPI, and so on- all make amazing high-end tables. For all but those particularly obsessed (even by audiophile standards) or who really enjoy endless equipment searches/sagas (I don't), I believe it's better to narrow down high-end choices to several or so reputable manufacturers - a half dozen at most (all of whom, as mentioned before, likely make fabulous turntables that are a lot more alike than different in their presentation within the same system); particularly ones with some track history and reliability; and choose among them, both by sound preferences, plus other features (whether one needs more or less adjustability in their turntable setup (I don't in my case). Factors leaning towards the SME in my case was concern about having to keep the Linn in tune over time; the SME is built more like a tank in that regard. Obviously there are other 'tank-like' tables out there.
Anyone who hasn't reliably heard the competing table/arm/cart setups in the same system and same room is deluding themselves to think they can reliably isolate variables in the sound differences between these tables. I mean, I've heard substantive differences from things like isolation, tube rolling, and cable swapping on the order of the differences between high-end tables- and these differences invariably exist between high-end tables in different systems. That's not to say that differences between high-end tables don't exist (for example, recently I was able to compare my table by hearing it in a system with an AMG Viella- and their were obviously sonic differences), but too many posters in this thread speak as though they've attained ultimate knowledge in a vacuum- and while sometimes dealers or professional critics have a deeper experiential base, they have their own personal and situational biases- particularly the former, in my experience.
In my case, while I wouldn't be surprised if there were setups I could afford that could substantively better what I have now, for my own ears, very, very good enough is very, very good enough when it comes to the time, money, hassle and care of further comparing turntables- though I know that to many audiophile ears, such a standard is heretical. So I will only swap out my setup if/when I go to the next level- whether it would be a better SME setup or something like a higher-end AMG or Basis setup or something like that.