SME V : what to expect ?

I owned a SME IV for many years, that has the same arm tube, with slightly lesser bearings, on an Oracle Delphi MKIII.

After switching to a VPI TNT with JMW-10 arm, the VPI with the same MC cartridges sounded much, much better.

I would never buy another SME arm. They sound lifeless.

My experience with SME 345, same tube and bearings, is that they are competent performers, easy to set up and work with just about any cartridge. Is it the very best? Depends on your definition of best. I dont think it adds anything to the music, which I guess is what its supposed to do.

I am not sure that making a determination about an arm's sound by comparing it to a different arm on a dramatically different style turntable table is fair. The SME V is a fine arm. It may be not be the best, but it has little of the false added brightness (sometimes confused for liveliness) that many audio components do; definition and staging is very good. My issue with the arm is that it can have an overblown low bass that on the the wrong table (one without enough energy in the mid/upper bass) can make the bass range sound disjointed from the rest of frequency spectrum; almost like a poorly calibrated subwoofer. On the right table, in a system that needs the energy in the lower bass it can sound great. I went from an SME V to an ET2 and while I never really looked back, there were times when I used my Stax F-81's, which need all the help they can get in the low bass department, that I missed that low bass energy.