SME 3009 II Improved and MC cartridges

[Barncats]

All:

I spent a very long time last night doing a search of past AK discussions concerning the SII Improved arm. It seems that *most* people claim the arm is suited only for high-compliance cartridges. And indeed the most frequent pairing is with a Shure V15. Yet there are a number of posts in which people say they have had good success with moving coils.

I'm taking delivery of an Improved arm in a week or so. I am a big fan of Dynavector cartridges and am interested in trying my 10X5 in this arm. (It's in a TD-160 with TP-16 arm at the moment.) Eventually, if the 10X5 works well, I might even get a 20X for the SME.

Here's what I do not understand about the frequent comment that the Improved only works *well* with MMs like the V15. The 10X5 weighs 7.3 grams, the 20X is 9.1 grams. Compliance for both cartridges is 12. Effective mass of arm is 6.5. Therefore 6.5 + 7.3 = 13.8 total for the 10X5 combo, and 15.6 for the 20X combo. If you look at the resonance chart from VE (see attached), both of these fall well within the zone considered to be best. The 10X5 is circled in blue, the 20X in red. In both cases the resonance is 10hz. I suppose one could wish for 9hz, but even 11 is considered to be good enough to fall into the green zone. (I did not include mounting hardware in this math so I suppose that might add another half gram.)

Has anyone actually had the *direct, personal experience* that these medium compliance cartridges do not work well with the Improved arm? Or are we, as a group, simply moving this assumption forward when we speak about the Improved arm? As I said above, during my thorough exploration of posts from the past three or four years, a number of people cited direct positive experiences with MCs in their individual systems. A lot *more* people spoke about MCs in a negative or cautionary way, but these seemed always to be generalities and not someone speaking from direct experience.

Once my new arm comes, I will certainly experiment and report what I find. It has a MM installed in it at the moment and I have several other MMs to try, so I can compare those to the performance of the 10X5.

Meanwhile, I was just wondering if any of you has had direct personal experience with this combination and found that it did NOT work well?

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[bsujeep]

I have an S2 improved with a sumiko blackbird with soundsmith retip and it works fantastically. If yours has the removable headshell its effective mass is claimed to be 9.5gr, but I have done some measurements with mine and used Lucky dogs tonearm effective mass calculator which is an excel program to determine the effective mass of a tonearm. It showed that with the headshell I used the effective mass would be 15.5gr. YMMV of course, but I can attest to the use of an MC like the blackbird to have great results.

The fixed headshell version is lighter and that will make a difference. The values I found to put into the spreadsheet were:

CF 10
H 9.4
E blank
L 23.9
CW 110
W 7.4 (Rider weight at max)
V 2.0

This is just my personal experience others may differ

Bill

 

[fiddlefye]

I will be curious how this turns out. The one limiting factor is really more a matter of convenience in that the weight for VTF maxes out at 1.5 g, at least on my example. One could of course fudge it with a gauge and the counterbalance so it would not have to be a limiting factor.

 

[Barncats]

Hmmm, yes that could be an issue since the 10X5 is happiest at 2g in the TP16 (minimum recommended is 1.8g).

 

[Barncats]

Bill, at what VTF do you have the Blackbird running? Did you have to do a compensatory weight fudge as Fiddle suggested?

 

[ripblade]

You're not using the chart correctly. Effective mass of the arm is included already in the calculation and shouldn't be added a 2nd time. As indicated, sum the cart mass and hardware and enter that value.

All that noted, the chart should be used as a guide more than a bible since compliance specs are generalities listed by the manufacturer and in fact vary wildly between samples and will change with the age of the cartridge. I've successfully run medium and low compliance cartridges on a low mass arm and tested resonances in the optimum range despite the predicted numbers.

The problem here is not the so much the compliance but the lack of rigidity in the shell. A stiff suspension will transmit much of the groove energy into the flimsy shell causing it to flex. Decades ago I had an SII with a Decca Gold and it was an awful combination imo. The person I bought it from didn't think so.

In my experience, the DV carts tend to measure close to the chart values when new and will produce higher resonance numbers, but that needn't be cause for concern. If you want to try it, I suggest a shim be added to the shell, not so much to add mass but to damp and add stiffness.

Either way, you might like the combination regardless of what anyone says. Charts don't give an indication of sound quality, and much opinion is based on these charts as opposed to real experience.

 

[Barncats]

Right you are, Rip! My error in not reading VE directions methodically enough.

That certainly shoves both 10X5 and 20X into suspect territory.

I'll still give it a whirl and see what happens.

Thanks for your additional observations, too. I wonder if the older solid shells are more rigid than the perforated ones? (Not that I will have that choice, since this is the fixed-headshell version.)

 

[bsujeep]

Bill, at what VTF do you have the Blackbird running? Did you have to do a compensatory weight fudge as Fiddle suggested?

I am running the Blackbird at 2.0gr and I did have to compensate just as fiddlefye suggested. If you have a digital scale you might want to give a look at the spreadsheet I used, just do a google search for Lucky dogs tonearm effective mass calculator and download it. That was the reason I went ahead with the retip of the BB. I got it with a broken cantilever so never had the chance to run it "stock".

Bill