Tony L
Administrator
The thing you don’t seem to understand is all SME 30xx arms are ‘Frankenarms’ to some degree!
Here’s a picture of one of my pre-Improved Series II 3009s.
Here is my very early (and rare!) Series II Improved. If you have a good eye you will notice it is an intermediate step as it has the earlier arm rest, a metal knife edge and a very unusual bias hanger. Someone who didn’t know much about SME would likely call it a fake or Frankenarm, but it is entirely factory stock and its manual pictures match it 100% (annoyingly I haven’t got its box, that would add a lot of value!).
Here’s my later Series II Improved with fixed headshell so you can compare the arm rest, vertical bearing and bias hanger. There are later SII Improved arms that this as it lacks the RCA outs and is still Stevenson geometry. I’ve even seen very late ones with a black dashpot!
I post this just as an indication as to how SME as a company worked. I’m certain I called Rosewind’s 3009R correctly here all along. I didn’t believe for a minute that the counterweights or rear arm assembly were faked as they are a) too good, and b) don’t exist anywhere else (you just don’t set machining of that quality up and then not try to sell the result). It isn’t a ‘frankenarm’ at all, just one where the mounting screws have been lost along the way somehow, as have the box, manual etc. I’ve had to replace a couple of parts on at least one of mine, e.g. the heavy rider-weight, acorn nuts chewed up by idiots over tightening them etc (they don’t need more than finger tension, SME included a little plastic box-spanner!).
PS Contrast and compare all these pictures with the 3009R, you will notice many parts are unchanged since the early ‘60s!
