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SME Model 60 coming up, apparently

Hi,

It seems this deck will cost £50,000 upwards. The standard finish is anodised black or brushed silver. For extra money, you can have polished silver or fancy colour.

It has a revised suspension system based around the current SME 30. There is an outboard power supply with a separate box for the transformer.

The arm is the SME Va. It is made from a "high tech" resin that has been machined. The normal V is cast from a magnesium alloy. There are no plans to sell the new arm separately.

More details below.

https://www.whathifi.com/news/sme-r...record-player-and-its-immaculately-engineered
 
They'll sell a total of two to Russian oligarch stepdaughters/wives, to be left collecting dust in numbered company owned houses in London as ornaments.

Regardless, New SME will subsequently find a way to describe all of their lower models as having somehow retroactively inherited strands of DNA from this soon to be regarded as highly successful über-deck.

I wonder if you can buy rare mint LP’s by the meter to go with it?
 
I did think that this was fake news, but apparently not! Maybe it will appeal to overseas buyers with deep pockets, but to these eyes it looks rather boring and derivative. At least it does not look like it needs a fork lift truck for the installation!

It looks worse when you see it with the mismatched speed controller and external PSU.

If that weren't bad enough, it's not clear from the pics to date that they've left anywhere to mount a DustBug.
 
Got to say that SME 60 looks horrible, yes they have always looked a bit industrial and like an oil rig, but this just look a mismatch to me and for the asking price I would want more.
As for a £15k rega, then that's a very large jump in price over the P10 and unless it comes with the aura phono stage and matching power supply, I can't see them selling many as that sort off money isn't really rega's target audience I feel, as the naiad hasn't been a great seller over the years, maybe this is a cheaper version of that to try and sell more?
 
No justifiable reason as to why it costs 60k! Maybe show how good your engineering prowess is and produce something sub 1£k
 
Given how few 30's have ever sold I'm astonished they think there is any market at all for an even more expensive offering.

TBH the SME designs have never "floated my boat" sonically despite all the engineering. Tonearms in isolation similarly.
The problem with previous offerings is that they were not expensive enough.
 
Looks like a Roksan Xerxes 10/20/TMS, on steroids, photographed in a carnival mirror, with a fish-eye lens.

But of course round here we are only interested in sound quality, looks are a secondary consideration :rolleyes:
 

Factory tour/advertorial with Michael Fremer. The most interesting thing so far (I’m only half-way through) is the VA arm which has switched from magnesium to a polymer material for its arm tube. It looks remarkably time-consuming to make. Not a huge fan of the looks of the deck at all. Looks like one of the big VPIs rather than a SME to me.
 
The all black version on Michael Fremer’s Instagram feed looks a lot better than the contrasting black & chrome.
 
I think it looks pretty good. Not that I’m the intended customer. I’ll be very interested to hear it though. Will report back as soon as I have!
 


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