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SME 3009 Series III Haters

Not much has been written about this old classic lately but I just acquired one and put it on an Oracle Alexandria. I read all sorts of bad comments like its the Red Head of SME’s arms but there were a few that loved it and I’m here to say I’m in the love camp. I’ve been at this for 40 or so years and had my share of gear. I have a Grado Reference Series 2 that weighs 10 gms with a compliance of 20.
The arm only has a moving mass of 5 gms, that is low these days but this combination works fantastic.
Ya the arm has all sorts of adjustments but most of us enjoy messing around with that sort of thing anyway, and every setting makes perfect sense and makes you think why don’t more arms give you that flexibility. Anyway all the manuals can be downloaded so there is no reason if you come across one you couldn’t get it to sing on your system. There are other classic SME arms from the 80’s that sell in the thousands but these can be had in the $500 range. Worth ever penny and only going to go up in price.
Get your hands on one and see for your self what a quality arm feels like and sounds like.
This has the feel of an arm that just came out, can’t believe it’s 40 years ago. My 2 bits worth 😎





128x128muddywaters61
totem395
390 posts
 
I've come across on more than 1 occasion where an owner 
of a series III arm did not care for its sound using the OEM SME cables supplied.
 It turned out they were running a cartridge that did not 
like the factory pre load of 275 uF supplied internally with these
cables.

Another consideration is the 2 different arm geometries 
between the version 1 and 2 arm tubes, if you happened to 
own one of each and switched between the 2 without 
making changes you'd be disappointed with the results.





muddywaters61's avatar
muddywaters61 OP
41 posts
 
Very good point Totem, I had forgotten 
about the stock interconnect that has a
resistor in line for the Sure Cart.
That would really give someone a bad 
impression of this gem. 
My purchase as much as it was New
Old Stock didn’t come with any cables. 
Using the stock Oracle cables. They are
30 years old and the team over at Oracle advised me while doing the arm install that
I could see a big improvement if I changed 
them as well. Jacques said cables have come a long way in 30 years. Don’t need
to spend big $ either. That’s next 😎
br3098
997 posts
 
The only reason to assume that the III should be used with high compliance cartridges is its very low mass
@lewm7  au contraire - compliance matching is dictated by resonance.  Mass is just one factor of a resonance equation.  "Flexi" is another factor (actually several factors, but let's lump them together).  Think of it this way:  if you have a wooden pole 12 feet long that bends and flexes slightly (not necessarily the same in each axis), will adding more weight (not mass) at one or both ends make the pole flex less or more?

The correct answer is more.  Weight added at then fulcrum increases stability while weight added outside of the fulcrum decreases stability; increasingly so the further away from the fulcrum you add the weight.  If you add weight while adding stiffness, or increasing the mass (in this case, weight added proportionally to all the lever) then "flexi" or compliance will reduce.

Who says that science and audio don't have anything to do with each other?

Post removed 
muddywaters61's avatar
muddywaters61 OP
41 posts
 
I think they can only go up in value.
Investing in gear with a solid
name behind it is like money in the
bank. I’ve bought and sold enough
used Mcintosh gear to know that first
hand. Some expensive esoteric gear
might be better but good luck finding
the right guy wanting it 10 years down
the road if the company has gone belly up.
We all have to admit at a certain level we
are really just splitting hairs. If someone
has taken the time to put together a system that works well together you
hear it instantly. I sold some used gear recently and delivered it, every guys system was worth under $10k or so
but they all sounded amazing.  
What a hobby! 😎


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