Some may recall I recently reviewed the SME Model 35 turntable for Soundstage and to be quite honest I fell in love. The level of dynamics, solidity, speed and detail were off the scale. More to the point there’s a gravitas, depth and sheer power to SME decks (and the Avid Acutus) that gives an impression of them delivering an extra octave below most other turntables. I have gradually upgraded my beloved GyroDec over the past 26 years and will never part with it, but the SME revealed more and took me a step closer to the master tape.
So I began hatching a plan to acquire one, which has taken a while to come together. I picked the deck up on Saturday and it was installed by SME themselves today which was exciting. As you would imagine it’s been in continual use since!
The shipping weight in its birch ply box is 69Kg!
I chose the midnight blue colour option from the 4 options available, because blue is my favourite colour and I’m buying a lifetime dream here frankly! Back in 1986 I recall the SME Series V tonearm gracing the front cover of Hi-Fi News and I would read it over and over again scarcely daring to think that I might one day own such a thing. Similarly I recall Ken Kessler writing an excellent overview and visit to SME piece for a high end analogue supplement they did which I am pretty sure I still have in my magazine archive. I certainly read that article hundreds of times and would fall asleep while studying for A levels or my degree with those articles on my pillow!
Rack re-building in full flow…
What it has revealed clearer than ever before is that there’s a slightly ragged quality to the NAC82 that reveals itself on lesser pressings or when the mix gets busy. It’s as if the SME digs so much information out of the groove and does so with such transparency that it’s throwing too much at the 82. I can’t help thinking that the 332 is going to be a much better match but we’ll see in time.
This is the first deck SME have produced in their new revised midnight blue shade…
What adding a second turntable to the system has also done is reveal that I am running out of shelving space on my two racks. I’m probably in the longer term going to have to get two 7 tier racks rather than a 5 and a 7. I can just about manage for now I guess, with a lot of rearranging. I rebuilt the entire stack/rack under the SME prior to its arrival but I’m now reorganising Rack 2 to accomodate all the power supplies and phono stages etc as well…
Anyhow I plan to shoot some proper DSLR pics but in the meantime I hope the attached phone pics do some justice to this remarkable piece of serious British audio engineering…
The new Series Vi (improved) with resin composite single piece machined armtube. They developed this material originally for a Formula 1 team (SME do a lot of work for F1 and aerospace as well as other audio manufacturers)
It’s such a thrill to hear my vinyl sounding like this and the level of surface noise seems lower than before.
One downside to the SME is it doesn’t have a dust cover like the GyroDec and I can see me spending my life with a cloth in hand keeping it clean! I’m pondering putting an ioniser in the room (I used to have one in the old house and it did seem to reduce the dust on things because it attracts the dust to itself). Wondering if any of you run them?
JonathanG
But i’ve got an even bigger case of “arm envy”. It’s such a shame that SME don’t supply the arms only anymore 
!