neonknight - my SME V was made in October 1999. In 2016 I asked SME about service and upgrade. Answer: unless something wrong, maybe not needed. But for 555 pounds they would do a full service + testing + new internal wire (silver litz van den Hul). I thought it was fair, but I checked the arm myself, found no obvious problems, and have never done it. Likewise, the phono cable stays the same, Kimber KCAG soldered to the DIN plug to the arm (a bit tricky). I borrowed a Hovland cable but heard only marginal improvement over the Kimber. Never tried a balanced phono cable. My phono stage can take this, but the general debate is that it does not matter much unless there are problems with single ended (the Io’s first gain stage is not truly balanced, anyway).
What HAS made a big difference to me, lately: 1) I was lucky, getting a quad of excellent ultra low noise Telefunken in the critical first gain stage of the Io, 2) fine-tuning the azimuth with a Fozgometer, plus other small cartridge adjustments, and 3) working more with speaker positioning. Small "boring" things that can add up to a lot. All in the service of a more quiet, stable, balanced dimensional stereo image.
The Hanss T30 is an entirely different animal compared to my VPI hw19 mk4, and my short verdict is "better". I agree with you regarding the VPI motors. In this and other respect the Hanss is clearly superior (although the SDS is perhaps the best power control, or at least more convenient to adjust, compared to the little box that comes with the Hanss). To compare the two, I recorded to DSD on my Tascam DA-3000. So I could A-B switch, comparing pitch, timbre etc. The Hanss won out. Someone wrote that Hanss cannot really rock (a Townshend player was better), but it has never bothered me. A friend of mine has the bigger brother, the T60, and it has a bit more deep bass and explosive dynamics than my T30, but these are basically similar-sounding designs. I have never heard Scheu, or even SOTA. I got a T30 demo for a very good price (ca usd 2800) ten years ago and have basically stopped looking for another player. I like the ideas behind the Hanss design, and find that they work well, like two motors, totally isolated from the player, strings pulling the platter evenly, from each side. The platter is clearly held in a much tighter ’grip’ than on the VPI (a critic might say; even so, with 6 strings, you get all the troubles of these rubber type strings, they vibrate, etc - and although averaged and evened out, it is not quite = full precision). Further, the magnetic bearing works much better than the springs on the VPI, even after placing the HW-19 on a Bright Star platform, and other tweaks I tried. That actually did help the HW-19 sound, but only after a lot of base / feet / platform tweaking. Which I got "free" so to speak with the Hanss. I placed the T30 directly on my solid stone rack top shelf, and have never felt the need for more tweaks, sand box, etc - no thanks.
I don’t blame my SME V for my troubles with the VPI player, it sounded ok on this spring-loaded turntable also, but it clearly likes the more stable Hanss platform better. There is no skipping or mistracking, except when the LP has a major problem.
I am interested in good ways to go, based on the system we have, for a low cost. In my case, maybe I should check the SME damping. A little more oil might do the trick. I have some treble noise or sibilance, on some recordings at least. Also, the Hanss player might sound even better with a linear power supply.
