Good carts with SME V

I agree that the arm / cart combination is very important. Ideally we would be able to listen to several combinations before buyng an expensive cart or arm. We often can’t do that; such is life. So the issue becomes, does the combo behave reasonably good, or "good enough". Here, there is now considerably more leeway, according to the debate I’ve read. New good arms are able to take on a large variety of carts. And vice versa. More products sound fairly good (thanks gods) combined with each other. However, there is still the "optimal" factor that Ralph mentions, important by itself. Although, in my case, I doubt if changing to another arm, from the SME V, would solve my cart problems.

I have a dedicated mono set up and the Audio Technica AT-33 mono is wonderful when attached to a SME V. This cartridge can be tricky, many uni-pivots just can't handle this mono cartridge. 

I have Reed 3p tonearm and the better the cartridge on it the better the sound with it, cartridge is still the most important, not a tonearm. 

An old Garrott p77 is a fantastic MM cartridge for Reed "12inch tonearm. I have many expensive MC cartridges, but it is true that some vintage MM cartridges are still much better to my ears! But it's not because of the tonearm! It's because of the cartridges.  

I disagree with you Chakster. And that is despite you and I being the two principle Reed 3P fan-boys on this board. Btw, if you don't mind my asking, where are you (Asia?). Just curious. This might be the topic of a separate thread, but between the drive system, the tonearm, and the cartridge, if forced to choose priorities, I would list the tonearm first, the drive system second, and the cartridge last. Case in point, the guy that restored my Thorens TD124 got amazing sound from my Reed 3P, my Thorens, and a lowly Shure M95ED cartridge. He took special pains to align the cartridge precisely with a SMARTractor. Please don't get me wrong, priorities does not equal expense. Jelco for one renders $ as non-correlating with quality. My emphasis on the tonearm comes from practicality. A tonearm that is difficult to adjust makes life with a turntable unbearable. A tonearm that is both easy to adjust and that sounds good makes vinyl playback a dream. 

I have mainly done like Chakster proposes. Cartridge first. Start from the source. Then, trickle down, to get the best from the new higher resolution source. Maybe get a better arm, table, phono stage. This strategy has worked well for me. Yet I have not compared a lot of tonearms. Starting from the tonearm seems a bit strange - but who knows in this hobby? Using Lyra cartridges, Titan and Atlas, I have no major complaints regarding SME V - cartridge compatability. Even if the Atlas, ideally, might have a tonearm that "soaks up" the energy even better. What I do know, is that the SME V is a good allround arm, better than "outlier" cases like the Souther/Clearaudio parallel arm. Possibly a longer arm would be a plus, but there are minuses too, going away from the main middle path (defined by the SME V and other classics).