SME is a

brand name A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create a ...

of an English company that produces

high end In economics, a luxury good (or upmarket good) is a good for which demand increases more than what is proportional as income rises, so that expenditures on the good become a greater proportion of overall spending. Luxury goods are in contrast to ...

tonearms and

turntables A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

, whose name has become synonymous with the industry standard detachable headshell mount.

History

SME was founded by Alastair Robertson-Aikman in 1946 under the title The Scale Model Equipment Company Limited to manufacture

scale model A scale model is a physical model which is geometrically similar to an object (known as the prototype). Scale models are generally smaller than large prototypes such as vehicles, buildings, or people; but may be larger than small prototype ...

s and detail parts for the model engineering trade. It was During the 1950s the company moved away from model making to precision engineering, principally parts for aircraft instruments and business machines. In 1959, Robertson-Aikman required a pick-up arm for his own use and an experimental model was built. It received such an enthusiastic reception from friends in the sound industry that it was decided to produce it commercially and the first SME precision pick-up arm appeared in September 1959. Production was 25 units per week composed entirely of individually machined components. At this time a new factory situated in Mill Road, Steyning was opened and the Company's name was changed to SME Limited, a less committal title to suit its new activities. 1961 the company opened a new factory in Mill Road,

Steyning Steyning ( ) is a town and civil parish in the Horsham district of West Sussex, England. It is located at the north end of the River Adur gap in the South Downs, four miles (6.4 km) north of the coastal town of Shoreham-by-Sea. The smalle ...

, Sussex and the name was changed to SME Limited. In December 2016 the company was acquired by Ajay Shirke with a view to preserve the brand's legacy and extend research and development activities, appointing a new CEO and a distributor for the UK market, Padood. In May 2018 the company acquired the rights to the Garrard Transcription Turntable brand as well as Loricraft Audio, the only officially authorised Garrard service agent. Intending to develop the Garrard audio brand in the near future.

Products

Series II

The company is notable for its 3009 and 3012 (9" and 12" respectively) tone arms which were widely adopted for

audiophile An audiophile is a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction. An audiophile seeks to reproduce the sound of a piece of recorded music or a live musical performance, typically inside closed headphones, In-ear monitors, open ...

and

broadcast Broadcasting is the distribution (business), distribution of sound, audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio ...

use during the 1960s and 1970s, at the higher end of the market. These arms featured a polished, bright-anodised aluminium main tube with a lightweight headshell, knife edge horizontal bearings, and an anti skating bias provided by a weight that hung by a nylon filament. Versions were produced with both fixed and interchangeable headshells; the SME headshell mount (based on an Ortofon design) became the de facto industry standard, and is still widely used today on consumer and especially DJ decks. Audiophile arms today tend to not use the SME mount, but this is not due to other standards replacing the SME but because audiophile arms now tend to not have interchangeable headshells at all in an effort to reduce mass and improve rigidity, though at slight expense of user flexibility. Some cartridges were produced that mounted directly into the SME headshell mount of the arm (rather than into a headshell), notably from

Ortofon __NOTOC__ Ortofon is a Danish manufacturer of electronic audio equipment. It is the world's largest producer of magnetic cartridges for phonograph turntables, with 500,000 cartridges sold annually. History The company was founded by engineers A ...

Series III

The Series III was introduced in the late 1970s incorporating changes from the Series II models (which continued in production) covering both styling and its exceptionally thin and lightweight main tube, the entire arm being interchangeable rather than just the headshell. The Series III had very low effective mass to fit high compliance cartridges such as the Shure V15 IV. Although technically advanced, the Series III never achieved the market dominance of the Series II.

Series V

The Series V arm was developed as a medium mass arm more suited to emerging moving-coil cartridges with lower compliance than previously available moving magnet cartridges. The removable headshell was eliminated, and the horizontal knife bearing was replaced with ball bearings, both in order to provide a more rigid structure for the cartridge. In recent decades, as with many of their competitors, the company's products have tended to move further and further upmarket. Recent products include the SME V tonearm, and extremely expensive (and consequently relatively rare) decks. The company bucked their upmarket move with the M2 tonearm which sits at the bottom of their current range .

Gallery

File:SME3009s2.jpg, SME 3009 Series II tonearm on Technics SL110 turntable File:SME V.jpg, SME V tonearm on a VPI TNT III turntable

References

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External links

SME homepage
Phonograph manufacturers Technology companies established in 1946 English brands Audio equipment manufacturers of the United Kingdom