The most interesting features on this version of the 3012 are the leadscrew system for advancing the counterweight, along with the method of decoupling the counterweight assembly and adjusting lateral balance. As such, it was removed, carefully cleaned and disassembled for the repair and restoration to begin. The new owner of the Neumann lathe did not want to keep the tonearm, which was admittedly in a very poor state of neglect. It was found on a Neumann disk mastering lathe, a common application for the 3012, its length allowing it to reproduce disks from the massive 16" vacuum platter. This array of parts is an SME 3012, the bigger version of the 3009, from the period of Shure's involvement with SME. They are of course also capable of offering an intensely enjoyable, accurate listening experience, coupled with an accurate cartridge. These systems are excellent for Quality Control in vinyl record manufacturing, to ensure that any defects are caught early. We have used our restored SME tonearms on a large number of reference reproduction systems, for our own use and for our customers, such as the Thorens TD160 project which was presented here last February. This outstanding tonearm was first introduced in 1959, setting a standard for high performance tonearm design which is still hard to beat, 60 years later. Over the past few years, we have restored a number of SME 30 tonearms, covering most of their variants made over the impressively long production life span of this model range.
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