SME turntables

Very true Taters. Have you been to his son Brian's shop (Audio Elements) in Pasadena yet? Brooks trained him well, and he is one of the best dealers in S. Ca, with some great lines.

I was there when they first opened a couple of years ago. Brian is a nice kid, but here is no Brooks. I always wondered how he took all those lines from the original Brooks Berdan store in Monrovia.

Hi Bdp24,

The prior turntable you are referring to is either the SPJ La Luce or Centoventi. I believe Brooks had more input on the SPJ tonearm design, but not sure about the table - I believe that was mostly the work of Judy Spotheim and team. Great man, and sorely missed by the audiophile community.

Right you are, Rzado, the table I was referring to is the SPJ La Luce. Brooks mentioned he had consulted on the design, but didn't get specific. Brooks had a working knowledge of suspension tuning from his days in race car design, and applied it to turntables. That's where his mod for the Oracle came from (adding mass at a specific location on the table's floating sub-chassis), which made possible getting the spring rates of the three suspension springs tuned to the same frequency. The sub-chassis therefore bounced up and down vertically in perfect balance.

Taters, Brooks was pretty sick for a couple of years before dying, and Brian was doing all the work (demoing, advising, selling, delivering, setting up, all the turntable/arm/cartridge assembling and adjusting) at Brooks Berdan Ltd. (which is still operational under the management of Brooks' widow Sheila) during that time, including showing at The Newport Hi-Fi Show. He may not be Brooks, but he's no regular Joe either! Many of Brooks' top lines (Wilson, VTL, lots of table/arm/cartridge makers), having established a working relationship with Brian as Brooks' health deteriorated, decided to follow Brian to his new store. Brian has added new lines (as has BB Ltd.), while some of the older ones (Jadis) stayed at the old store. An interesting situation! Both establishments are very deserving of patronage.

Mordante said :
I'm always a bit underwhelmed by SME arms. Never heard their turntables. But IMHO SME arms seem to suck out the live of the music. Over-dampened or something.

Mordante,
That's quite a common perception.
Indeed the SME arm is well damped, something that SME have been renowned for. In fact public opinion tends to be split between those who prefer maximum damping and those who feel SMEs are “over-damped”. One can only please some of the people some of the time. ;^)
The SME V is an outstanding product both sonically and in terms of manufacturing accuracy and ease of setup. It is a true “Super-Arm” but at only half the price of the competition which makes it a “steal”. Best I’ve heard the SME V perform is in the Avid Acutus despite, somewhat perversely, my being an "undamped" enthusiast.
There seems to be a great synergy between these 2 and although, like you, I wouldn’t normally prefer the SME V, I would cheerfully partner it with this table.

One of the great things about SME is that they are a traditional engineering company who make the parts themselves using in-house machine shops. Many others shared this mindset (B&O, Linn etc) and they’d routinely machine parts to an accuracy of half a “thou” (0.0005”). This is a tight tolerance generally reserved for main bearings etc. The Electronics company I worked for had many in-house machine shops around the country who routinely manufactured even the most basic parts to that level of accuracy (that is until someone protested that half the stuff we fabricated didn’t have to be this good and would settle for +/-2 thou!!!)