Best Koetsu for SME V

Dear Smoffatt: I like the Platinum series but not in a SME. I wonder why with that TT/tonearm are you looking for a Koetsu?

For your kind of music and with your analog rig the Dynavector XV-1 or the Lyra Titan could be great choices.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

I tend to agree with Raul here as I have found that matching the arm with Koetsu's is the key to performance. For many years I owned a Black which I had rebuilt by the now deceased Garrott Bros and it was a great cart in the right arm and in the wrong arm (mid -low mass) it just sounded warm and friendly, but bland. I have a soft spot for Koetsus and recently I picked up a Rosewood Sig that had been retipped by VdH but the body has about 20 years vintage. I was blown away by how solid this was in the bass and extended in the highs on a high mass damped arm -in this case a Micro-Seiki Max 282. It also sounds really good on my Triplanar. I thought I would need a RS Platinum to get that extension at the top end. I should also mention that I am getting better results on my SP 10 heavy plinth direct drive than on my belt drive Micro-Seiki RX 5000. Someone here on another post mentioned that Sugano-san voiced the carts on a Lenco idler DD deck, hmm, interesting.

Bottom line is the SME / Koetsu match will not get the best out of the wood body carts unless you are prepared to play around a lot with the damping. I cannot comment on the jade / onyx bodies, but would love to hear from those with experience of those.

Steve:

AFAIR, Sugano-san was indeed using idler turntables but these were Garrards (301 & 401) rather than Lencos. I visited him a number of times, and don't recall having seen him with a Lenco.

BTW, an idler is not a DD, and again I don't recall having seen Sugano use a DD.

regards, jonathan carr

I used a Urushi on an SME V. Now I am using a Jade on an Ikeda. The Urushi sounded fabulous but you did lose the last bit of bass. What I did to maximize the performance is use the spacer between the Koetsu & Headshell to be able to get the VTa negative enough. The other thing is I added mass to the SME V using Bluetak inside the headshell (but not into the armtube) and blue tak on top of the arm at the pivot. This advise I found on AA. It worked wonders. Truly increased dynamics and extension. IME Koetsu prefer high mass. SME V is medium but w. the blue tak (it didn't look bad at all) I had a high mass arm. I would suggest the RSP as probably the best of both worlds for the money.

Thanks Jonathan, my mistake re the DD. I hope to get my Lenco rebuild done in a couple of weeks, so the comparison between this idler drive and the SP10 DD in heavy plinths will be interesting. For what its worth, on both of my rebuilds have gone to some length to isolate the arm board from the possible vibrations from the motor drives and platters. On the Lenco I am building one board firmly coupled to the table mass plinth as most folks usually build and the other decoupled from the table plinth but coupled to the base plinth that the table is also coupled to, so I can compare the two.

Since I am so pleasantly surprised with my newly acquired Koetsu RS I would like to hear from those have compared that with the RSP.
Steve