There was discolouration on the cart from the glue, but I brought it back to shine with some solvent.įlipping over the deck carefully, there were clear marks from where the cables touched the plastic bottom cover. I spent some time carefully scraping off the glue from the headshell and cartridge body. The cartridge was also stuck to the headshell with some sort of glue or epoxy. The headshell wires were disintegrating, even with careful prying using flat-blade screwdrivers and needle-nose pliers. Still, it would have been nice to have a complete set. The difference is that the ADC headshell allows adjustment, the SME headshell doesn’t. The weight between the two is fairly close, at roughly 7g. The arm also came with an ADC LMG-1 headshell instead of the original shield-shaped SME headshell. The arm was even graciously fitted with an SME FD200 fluid damper, but there was only one paddle (13mm, white) and the damping fluid was dirty. From visual inspection, though, everything looked to be in good condition – dirty, but nothing broken, except for the missing cartridge cantilever. The turntable surface was very dirty, with dust caked into every crevice I could see. There was also a Garrard MRM-101 Music Recovery Module – an MM phono stage with a noise suppression feature – that needed nothing more than a little servicing with its parts. What I took delivery of was a dead Technics SL-150 direct-drive turntable, factory fitted with an SME 3009 Series II Improved tonearm and a Shure V15 Type-III cartridge. The original owner bought the equipment new in the late 1970s but later migrated, so it has been in storage since… for about three decades! WHILE the pandemic and general economic downturn has been hard on many, I landed the opportunity to be the custodian for a turntable that was in dire need of a restoration.Įarlier in the year, the editor approached me to unload a few pieces of old audio gear.

Repairing shure sme 3009 tonearm