Bydlo,
If you prefer what I consider a natural amount of pick-apart detail presented in recorded music then SPU will have easily enough when mated to an appropriate tonearm. I am not sure why people think that the SME 3012 is a great match. The 3012 will work -- just. It's a medium mass arm at 14g and the SPU is a fairly low compliance cartridge (eff mass 8, which is just a skosh less compliant than the Denon 103 when that cartridge's compliance rating is corrected for Denon's non-standard spec). A tonearm more in the area of 20g effective mass is better. Moreover, I've never found SME's knife-edge bearing well suited to the energy these massy, low compliance cartridges ping back into the tonearm structure. The Thomas Schick tonearm is ideal and relative to what new quality tonearms cost today, it's moderate. I've also gotten good results, unexpectedly, from a vintage Stax UA90 and of course the current production Ortofon RS-309. For standard-length tonearms, the Jelco 750D with the heavy counterweight option does pretty well. In the latter case, this is also a medium mass arm, so the heavy counterweight and the heavy Ortofon SPU-in-headshell push up effective mass, just as they would with an SME. Still, a Schick is a much better platform for this cartridge, IMO.
Pani - In my Schick and Stax arms, the Meister Silver is fast and articulate, with the emphatic drive characteristic of the big SPU whereas the Synergy is creamier and more forward, partly because if has more output voltage, and its emphasis - by small degrees - is on pure tone over articulation and speed, compared to the Meister Silver. These differences are fainter in the Jelco 750D arm. I'm not splitting hairs on this, but on the other hand both cartridges are so thoroughly SPU, you couldn't go wrong with either if you are attracted to the essential SPU sound. If you have too much gain in your system, you can opt for one of the 0.2mv Classic SPUs, and that will shift things further in the vintage direction.
I think the Royal N is worth trying -- it's certainly less expensive -- if you want to get in for fewer dollars. If you use a ~14g arm you might want to buy a heavier-than-standard headshell for it. But the headshell will be a variable. The basic character of SPU will come through plus the Royal N has the Replicant 100 stylus, so it's articulate too.
Phil
