SME Tonearms of Canada - Alfred and Company that sell new and refurbish SME

Have you done a search? This topic has been posted and discussed before. Short answer; he does good work but on my vintage SME 3009 arm, when the problem with the cue lever could not be resolved, he stopped returning my messages and calls. He also hard-sold me on a forty year old NOS GAS moving magnet cartridge for $900 and refused to take no for an answer until I insisted he stop bringing it up. Overall, good and bad. 

Only buy from his eBay listings as they are listed as new sealed in box with full warranty. If they come in any other condition, you'll have PayPal and eBay to help you with the return process. You'll be 100% protected. Once you get the tonearm, verify serial number and warranty directly with SME. They respond promptly and have fantastic customer service. 309 is listed at $2000 and IV at $2800. These are excellent prices.

He is a crook.  I sent an arm to him years ago and he said he never got it.  Then ended up selling it to someone.  Its a small world.

There is a guy in the UK doing great pickup arm work---Johnnie at Audio Origami. He does rewires using either Cardas copper or two different brands of silver (one being Kondo)., and has nothing but satisfied clients.

I once used Flat Earth Audio (flatearthaudio.com). I got a new stub for a 3012's badly-sagging c'wt, and two grades of silicon, for a damping trough and cueing device — not easy to find. Super nice guy too, happy to talk tech with you — not a "time is money" guy at all.

The site says they went our of business — yet the site is still up and active, listing parts, rebuilt arms and other services. That’s really odd if they’re out of business, it costs money to keep a site up.

There’s a phone number and email-contact on the site, I’d check it out — maybe he’s still operating on a different basis.

Smetonearms’ prices seem extreme to me, capitalizing on scarcity, and Flat Earth had (maybe has) far more variety. Plus they’re not "foreign", so no issues there.

If you call, and he is still active in some form, please let us know. I hate to see a nice guy who does great work fail commercially — and I’ll definitely use him again, if it’s possible.