Hi all,
First thing, please excuse my ignorance but I'm rather new to this vinyl malarkey . I picked up a really nice minty TD125 mkII this week and I'm trying to work out which arm to put on it (it came with an SME cut board). After some chat with the super helpful @petrat, I now have the SME M2 in mind. However, I'm rather confused as to whether the M2-9 or M2-10 would be suitable.
Here are a couple of examples of TD125 fitted with M2-9...
It seems to me that on both of those decks, the SME M2-9 is mounted quite far to the left on the arm board (more than usual for, eg a 3009). Which leads me to think, perhaps the M2-10 would be a better fit on the TD125. However, looking at the numbers on the vinylengine database has confused me...
Pivot > Spindle (mm)
3009 II = 215.7
M2-9 = 215.4
M2-10 = 222
Looking at those figures, it looks like the M2-9 would be a direct swap for a 3009 (as you'd expect)...but, pictures of the 3009/TD125 combo always show the 3009 sitting centrally on the arm board. To confuse matters further, I've also seen data claimed to be from SME themselves that quotes the SME 3009 TT to arm pivot as 221.80mm (which would match the M2-10). This is far more consistent with the visuals I've seen, but I find it hard to believe that the vinylengine database is wrong for the 3009 (?). Furthermore, the centre of the SME cutout on my arm board measures pretty much spot on 222mm, again a match for the M2-10.
Muddying the waters further, another arm I'm considering is the Jelco 750D. Vinylengine quotes that arm as having a 214mm pivot > spindle, more in line with the 3009 and M2-9, BUT that seems to mount centrally on the TD125 arm board as well, as on this lovely thing...
I considered it might all be to do with overall length of the arm, but again the numbers don't see to bear this out. I'd hugely appreciate any thoughts on what's going on here please, and ultimately, which SME M2 arm is more suited to the TD 125 mkii. Thanks!