SME V, Tri-Planar or Phantom B-44

Dear Stringreen: Do you play it with your Ebony? what's wrong?

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

I've not heard the Phantom, but I've heard a Lyra Olympos on both an SME V and on my TriPlanar. Different systems, but the preamps and amps were identical and I've heard the SME owner's system with a variety of cartridges, so comparisons aren't totally invalid. It was the same Olympos both times, set up by its long-time owner (and he owns both SME and TriPlanar arms himself, so the setups were probably good).

To all ears, including the Lyra owners', the TriPlanar was a much better match. More life, more snap, much more low level detail. It let the Olympos sound like what it is, one of the world's top cartridges, with just a fine hint of warmth taking it away from today's more neutral or even slightly cool Lyra sound.

On the SME, the same cartridge sounded grey, staid, reserved almost to the point of being dull. For whatever reason, far less information was getting through.

My experience, FWIW.

With the SME V, the Ebony sounded closed in and lifeless compared to either VPI's. Of course, I tried various VTA settings, dampings, etc. If you have nothing to compare it to, the SME sounded fine...only in comparison to the VPI's were the problems revealed.

The issue with the SME V is colorations due to mid and high frequency resonance. That is in fact why the 'Analog Survival Kit' was devised by Sumiko years ago. The arm wrap was very useful in reducing colorations that are common with the SME V. The result had to be heard to be believed: the arm wrap was a necessity.

The problem was that the arm warp added to the effective mass, making the cartridge choice more difficult.

By contrast both the Triplanar and the Graham have effective arm-tube-resonance damping systems, rendering the arm wrap obsolete.

If anything, I would say this is the main issue with the SME V that makes it a distant 3rd choice in this thread. Secondary: the Triplanar is considerably easier to set VTA, which can be done on the fly. You can sort of do this with the SME, but you can only go up, not down, and you have to loosen the arm to do it, which is audible. It is also easier to make micro-weight adjustments on the Triplanar, as it has a secondary weight that makes tenths of a gram changes easy.

The Graham and the SME both have output connectors at their base into which inserts the interconnect cable. This is nice for flexibility, as you can easily run the arm balanced or single ended by changing the cable. The Triplanar has the cable exit at the base of the arm, and is one continuous run from the cartridge, with no extra connections right to the input of the preamp. It too can be balanced or single-ended, ordered that way. It can be changed over in the field without too much difficulty, if you know what you are doing. Overall I favor this approach, as any additional connectors are always audible with signal levels as low as they are in a tone arm.

I do believe that the SME also has damping in the arm tube itself..as do others.