SME began in 1946 as the Scale Model Equipment Company, which is where the initials come from, making precision models for the exhibition and model engineering trade. By 1950 it was machining precision aircraft parts for Rolls-Royce, Hawker, and Martin Baker. Audio arrived almost incidentally in 1959, when founder Alastair Robertson-Aikman designed a pickup arm because he wanted a better one for himself. The arm was so obviously superior that it became the business.
That order of events explains SME better than anything else. This is a precision engineering company that happens to make turntables, and it still runs a separate engineering division serving aerospace, motorsport, medical, and automotive customers from the same Steyning works in West Sussex. The tolerances the turntables are held to come from that world, not from audio.
The current range is stated in the company's own tiers: the Model 60 at Ultimate Performance, the Model 35, the Model 12, the integrated Synergy, and the Model 8, which SME itself calls an entry-level design. The engineering is uncompromising in specific, checkable ways — hydraulically damped main bearings, suspensions with independently controlled vertical and horizontal behavior, and, on the Series VA and Vi arms, armtubes CNC-machined from high-density polymer resin rather than metal, for a lower resonance signature. The Model 60's motor is fed by a dedicated DSP engine generating independent sine waves, holding 33.33 rpm to within five thousandths of a percent.
The M2 Series tonearms are available on their own, for turntables that deserve better than what they came with — and an SME arm on a Dr. Feickert deck is a combination worth asking about. Discuss an SME turntable with us.
