Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

All things considered, 1986 was an unlikely time to launch a high-end phono cartridge brand, and all the more so considering it happened in Japan. When I moved to Tokyo four years after Yasuo Ozawa started Shelter, what the Japanese call 'Analog Disc' was almost as dead as the proverbial Monty Python parrot. True, you could slum it around the seedier sides of downtown Shimokitazawa and Asagaya and find an isolated second-hand record shop, but the only news in town was the shiny new Compact Disc.

Two things struck me when PM said we'd be reviewing a cartridge from a new manufacturer. The first thought, from my glass-half-empty side, was: do we really need another? But the second was: this must be proof that the vinyl revival is substantial enough to warrant it. When told that the company was planning a 25th anniversary model, my curiosity about Skyanalog was truly piqued. 'New' it most certainly isn't.

Every hi-fi era has its buzzwords, and while variations on the theme of 'digital' and 'high-res' have permeated our collective consciousness over the past few decades, the 2020s have so far proved thick with references to 'trickle-down technology'. Brands have always launched flagship products to showcase technologies that eventually 'trickle-down' to middle and entry-level ranges, but nowadays there's almost an expectation that this osmosis of tech will happen swiftly, and wholesale.

SME’s development of its formidable flagship Model 60 turntable, released a couple of years ago [HFN Jul ’22], continues to influence designs lower down the UK manufacturer’s range. All are being upgraded to MK2 status, the latest being the Model 15. On test here, retailing for £12,067 with pre-fitted SME 309 tonearm, this deck is also the most affordable in SME’s lineup with a proper suspended subchassis.

For a company that took three decades before introducing its first turntable, followed by a seven-year wait between the second and third models, SME seems now to be moving at a lightning pace. The flagship Model 60 arrived in 2022 [HFN Jul ’22], followed swiftly by Mk2 versions of the Models 12 and 15 over the next two years [HFN Jan ’23 and Jul ’24, respectively]. Now it has added two more turntables to its portfolio – the Model 8, replacing the Model 6 as SME’s entry-level unit, and the Model 35 seen here, slotting in below the Model 60.

For a company not exactly known for ‘product churn’, SME has been uncommonly busy with the release of several new turntables, including the flagship Model 60 [HFN Jul ’22], the Model 35 [HFN Jul ’25] and now the £9999 Model 8. The latter replaces the Model 6 that, fitted with an SME M2-9 tonearm, marked a departure for SME on its release in 2020. Not only was it the company’s first ‘entry level’ design, it was also the first to utilise a solid, non-suspended plinth arrangement and the first SME deck to employ an AC motor.

One challenge faced by those designing hi-fi in the high-tech 1980s was how to re-package the LP in a way that would ensure it remained of interest to consumers in a future that was clearly going digital. Released in late 1979, the Technics SL-10 turntable [HFN Apr '19], with its parallel tracking, optical position sensing and slick packaging was one of the first components to address this issue seriously.