I guess it was inevitable but after a bit of cart swapping on my SME arm one of the cart tags broke loose
They had always looked a bit fragile and after soldering first one tag back on and then another and feeling chuffed that I had it working again frustratingly the third and fourth tags decided to fall off just as I was fitting a newly arrived Denon DL 103 MC cartridge Grrrr...
After considering sending the arm away for a professional rewire a quote for over £100 quickly convinced me to look at having a go myself and on ebay I found a 33x4 AWG Cardas Golden section litz tonearm rewire kit which came with some high silver content solder and gold plated cartridge clips and for £10.
The SME 3009 series 2 improved arm was pretty straight forward to disassemble and interestingly on disassembly I found the original wire had been repaired in the past as a short length about an inch and a half off of the cart end the wire was thicker and had been joined to the thinner internal wire with the join hidden inside the arm tube just behind head shell.
Other than the 33x4 AWG being more fiddly to work with than I have been used to rewiring the tonearm was pretty straight forward and took about an hour to complete including a short pit stop for a coffee and bacon sandwich.
The rewire has been a great success and playback is sounding better than ever with the added bonus the new cart clips are a joy to use when compared to the small fiddly old ones.
Cheers
Jamie
« Last Edit: August 20, 2016, 03:26:59 AM by JamieMcC »
Shoot for the moon if you miss you will still be amongst the stars!
