Internal Wire Upgrade for SME V


keegiam
The best place to get an SME rewired is by SME themselves.
SME still service their arms, and will rewire upon request.
Their service is superb, not cheap, but often they replace parts, even the whole armtube if they are not up to scratch. Your arm comes back as new.

I would not let anyone else rewire it.

If you send it to SME for service, best wire is Kondo fairy wire.
Yes it is silver, I pesonally dont like most silver cables, but the Kondo is in a different league. I doubt the naysayers above have ever heard a Kondo wired SME.

Dear @keegiam :  The best wire/cable qualituy performance level are made it with pure silver, cooper is not even near the fenomenal silver quality.

I never heard in a tonearm the Kondo silver rewire but I listened in my system the Audio Note KONDO SUT that is 100% silver by KONDO extremely expensive but not in a diferent league than my AU-1000.

What I recomend to you is to rewire your V with Audio Note ( UK. ) silver wiring all the road to the phono stage inputs, this is that the IC cable is just continuous from the cartridge output pins directly to the input phono stage. This is the best you can have it no matters what.

This is Audio Note:

https://www.audionote.co.uk/wires

series AN-wire-300.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.


Replacing stock cable is the last thing you can do, really.

There are many more things in your analog chain you can upgrade with much more noticeable results than an internal tonearm wire.

Maybe it's the last thing I could do, but the time is now. 

This technician works at the same shop where I bought my SOTA Star Sapphire 30 years ago, just a few blocks away.  He already has the table and is replacing the bearing.  He will be installing the new cart and re-setting the SME to match.  I am not going to dismount the arm and send it to SME for new wiring.  I'd rather stick with the original.

It's now or never.  You may be right that replacing the wiring is not a major improvement.  But my choice is yay or nay.  I would probably go with AudioNote instead of these cheap kits, but - why not?
Actually, replacing the wiring of my ET2 arm three times (Cardas, Discovery and lastly AudioNote silver) taught me just how much difference tonearm wire can make. It made significant improvements; especially the AN which resulted in a major improvement in refinement, clarity and speed, all without harshness. Highly recommended! I would however heed Dover’s advise and have the work done by SME themselves and would have it done as Raul suggests, straight, uninterrupted shot from cartridge clips to RCA plugs. Good luck.