Kinna interesting. I am probably one of the only people to wear out an SME turntable. The 30/2 has been sent to the shop, likely the main bearing is worn out. It started stalling and the platter holder scrapes onto the top plate. It’s likely 20 years old at this point.
When we got the Santa Cruz place, I got a Sony PS X70 DD from eBay for $250 (42 years old, all original). Never played it much over there due to neighbor proximity. eventually just brought it back to add to my audio warehouse pile. I thought about just giving it away. It was the second from the top down from the legendary Sony PS X9 (several on ebay now, still sell for thousands up depending on renovation and condition), and uses a curved micro seiki arm.
However, I decided to put PS X70 on the SME altar. I went into my ‘vinyl drawer’ a couple of weeks ago, there was a small oil spill, and while cleaning it out, I found my ancient Ortofon Kontrapunkt a, a cartridge that I used for a few months when I first got back into vinyl on an SME 10 turntable (almost 20 years ago??). I had completely forgotten about it. I paid $180 for it wholesale from a Hong Kong wholesaler and used it before ‘moving up’ in MC cartridge quality. They still make them, and they now cost $600 or so.
Anyway, I put the Sony PS X70 on the SME altar to have a placeholder, installed the Kontrapunkt a, plugged it into the Allnic head amp. Lo and behold, vivid, dynamic sound that is very high end. I was shocked.
The turntable arm is medium to high effective mass, the cartridge is low compliance, so the sound is ‘tape like’, dense tonalities. i am playing records that I haven’t for a while and shake my head at how good it sounds.
That’s what I think of as ‘analog’. It is unlike any digital type experience (not that there is ANYTHING wrong with today’s great digital), but it is rich, vibrant, detailed, dense, rocking midrange and lower midrange, huge imaging etc.
It’s also nice to have this kind and quality of vinyl presentation albeit with bargain vintage stuff while I await the fate of the SME 30/2 at the hands of the repair apparatus.