Sme tonearm coupons series#
Turns out this was because for over four years AR-A was working on a wholly new arm that became the Series V, introduced in 1986. AR-A was somewhat behind this particular curve, and for the better part of the decade between the late seventies and the latter half of the eighties, you didn’t read much about SME in the audio press. The statement I’m about to make may be wrong-though not by much-but inasmuch as AR-A died in 2006, the SME 3009 Series arms may constitute the longest-lived components in the history of audio to have survived the death of their inventor as in-production products unmodified by any hands other than his own.Īccording to SME, the 3009 II Improved was still selling well when it was retired, but long before then, high-end enthusiasm had gone overwhelmingly in favor of moving-coil pickups, starting, I think it fair to say, with the advocacy of Harry Pearson and The Absolute Sound in the mid- to late-seventies. Including all its variants and versions-Series II, Series II Improved in both 9- and 12-inch lengths (AKA 3012)-SME is said to have sold between half a million to a million units (sources differ) worldwide between 19, the year it was retired. Indeed, the reason the 3009 II Improved, the last iteration of the 3009, was made available with the option of a fixed headshell is that eliminating the connector reduced effective mass from an already very low 6.5 to 3.5 grams. Despite the fact that Ortofon marketed some of its moving-coil pickups in headshells designed expressly to fit the 3009-further proof of SME’s hegemony that its bayonet-style connector became the industry standard for removable headshells-SME continued to cater to moving magnets. distributor was none other than Shure, which coined the word “trackability” and established low tracking-force as a necessary condition for state-of-the-art record reproduction and preservation. If no accident, it was surely a marriage made in heaven that SME’s first U.S. This is because, with knife-edged bearings and low mass, the 3009 was ideally suited for the low-mass, high-compliance moving-magnet pickups, capable of tracking at forces below 1.5 grams (0.75 for the ADC XLM, much admired by TAS founder Harry Pearson in the early issues of this magazine), that likewise dominated the market during the first quarter century of stereophonic reproduction. AR-A named it the 3009 and billed it as “the best pickup arm in the world.” Immodest no doubt but far from an idle boast at the time and for at least two or three decades to follow, depending on your choice of phono cartridge. This first arm officially became a product in 1959. “I recall going into the small tool room,” he said many years later, “and asking if we had any aluminium tube!” Within the year he had built a prototype that he showed to the Senior Technical Editor of Gramophone magazine, Percy Wilson, who told him that two or three of his friends might like one, adding, “Perhaps an annual turnover of as many as a thousand pieces might be possible.” This figure stuck with AR-A because during the week of one of Wilson’s last visits to the plant, SME had “built a thousand units and was averaging seven-hundred-and-fifty units per week.” But finding himself dissatisfied with existing tonearms, he decided to design one for himself. An opera lover, AR-A, as he was affectionately known throughout the company (and eventually the world of high-end audio), quickly embraced the long-playing record.
SME stands for the Scale Model Equipment company, a British firm founded in 1946 by Alastair Robertson-Aikman to manufacture precision models for the exhibition and model-engineering trade. As over a half century of innovative design and standard-setting precision in engineering and manufacturing lie behind this new product, it is worth tracing its lineage.
SME’s new model is the latest turntable-with-tonearm package from a company whose long and honorable history makes one regret the adjective “iconic” has been so preposterously overused these last many years.