I’ll reserve judgement until I hear it, but I couldn’t imagine AR-A coming out with something like that!
If I were more prosperous, I'd rather just have a nice SME 3009 II tonearm and an armboard for my Technics SL-1500 and that be my daily driver.
That looks like one of those cheap portable turntables. What the hell is SME thinking? I can't see how this is a better business move than just selling tonearms without having to buy a whole table.
The key thing to learn / know is how does it play / sound after all looking good is secondary to the sound produced ... well at least for me
The picture lacks scale, particularly when the separate controller is somewhat large, making the turntable look a bit 'Fisher Price'. More details here: SME Model 6 review | What Hi-Fi? 42cm wide, 32cm deep.
Well, it may be just as well engineered as the review claims, but it omits a 78 speed. Leaving aside the $$$, that would let it out for me right there.
Some comments elsewhere were concerned that it looked tiny - even to the extent of comparing to this and its like:
$8200 USD for that? It looks like a dolled up Crosley. Plastic plinth, cheap flimsy arm, can't see the platter but the mat looks looks like cheap thin rubber. For $8200 you could buy a near top of the line VPI instead of this tinker toy. Does SME really think folks are going to fall for this? $200 for the table and $8000 for the name?
That arm used to retail just under £1,000, before the huge price rise, so they want five grand for an ugly looking resin deck, even What Hi Fi were heavily hinting how both the much cheaper Rega 10 and Vertere are better decks and their review is virtually a PR puff piece, I still want them to start selling arms again though.
Still think this is a wind up or SME's new business model is to go out of business as soon as possible- that ' SME 6' is just plain embarrassing.
It doesn’t have the exuberance of the hugely talented and cheaper Vertere DG-1 ( which is under half the price ! ) and does not look like a crosley & costs more than the MG-1 but the 6 offers an attractive blend of precision, stability and composure that many will like. .
Honestly, I can't imagine a single audiophile who would spend this much on this deck when there are myriad options of various manufacturers at this price point (and below) that not only look better than this SME, but also perform better and aren't made out of plastic.
I'd happily own both the Vertere and Rega and if I were in the market both would be on my short list and I hope to own at least one of them in the future, but I don't think I'd add something at twice the price that doesn't perform as well and looks ugly, people buying the SME must have more money than sense in which case they should move up the range and buy a proper SME deck and arm.
To be fair, though, the jury is still out until someone knowledgeable but with no incentive to keep an advertiser happy gets hold of one of these things, puts it through its paces, and files an objective report. I remember when the Nakamichi BX-1 and BX-2 cassette decks came out, they were priced at an unheard-of low level for a Nak but at or above the top price for most other lines. The Stereo Review reviewer made the point that when a "high end" manufacturer builds a product that performs in the same ballpark as its usual product but sells at a significantly lower price point (I think the gist of it was "if Rolls Royce were to build a car to sell at the price of a Volkswagen Scirocco"), every superfluous aspect of the design must be pared away. In the case of SME's new offering, imposing cosmetics would fall into that category. I think of my own Fons International Mk. I turntable. It performs like a champ--with an SME arm, as it happens!--and offers playback flexibility for 78s exceeding that of almost any other turntable known to me, but the plinth looks undistinguished, to be kind to it. In that case, a small, recently established company chose to put its money where it counted: into the engineering. In the case of the SME, maybe the situation is similar. Maybe the "plastic" is a composite material of some sort that actually performs better than more traditional choices, at least the ones usually encountered at this (admittedly, elevated) price point. Maybe "under the hood" it has brilliantly executed speed control and propulsion systems yielding better speed stability and operating flexibility than its competitors. Maybe what appears a plain rubber mat has some sort of hidden interior structure that effectively deadens resonances in a new way. Maybe. Maybe. Or perhaps SME is just trading on its exalted name to put out a ridiculously expensive mundane product. It happens, sometimes, when a "precision engineering" company finds its products have become so expensive they start slipping from "in-the-know model of choice" to "luxury goods" and it can't hold market share. Anybody remember the Leica CL? As I said earlier, I'd never buy one of these turntables, because it won't handle 78s, but then I'm not their target audience. That said, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the proof of the audio component is in the listening. No use speculating on appearance alone until we know how the thing actually performs and sounds.