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Inevitably of course there are whole swathes of the sonic universe that both arms share. With a decent well-constructed turntable on a wall shelf, both display a calm authority, an absolute stability of image and instrument that reminds one of those benefits in CD. Scale is never a problem. They grow and lift dynamically reasonably well. They are unfussy and the opposite of neurotic. But then compare them directly and things come as a shock.
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The IV in comparison to the Kondo’d V sounds dull, dead, boring, indifferent to what it’s playing, tone-deaf and lifeless. Which is unfair and outrageous. Why is that happening? What aspects of this magnificent design and world-class execution are causing the problem? We know that the bridge was creating some havoc so everyone removes it these days. But it was designed to add extra rigidity to the support bracket rather like a roll cage in a convertible car.
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Yet something (presumably in the way resonances are being absorbed and dissipated down the arm – or the way they are not) might end up in some kind of feedback loop there because it is obvious even to the uninitiated that removing the bridge brings a significant improvement all‘round.
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The SME IV exemplifies the prosaic. Put on Art Pepper’s Today [CA 671] and the first thing it'll tell you is that it doesn’t like cymbal shimmer, preferring just to kind of point in that general direction. It’s like a dancer who used to be good but now has arthritis and a stiff neck. This is an arm that knows how to have fun because its maiden aunt once went to an Amish party and learned how to drink lemonade and say words like plain.
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Some might call it austere, forceful, unembellished. I’d call it challenged in the radiance department. So frankly even if it does so many things spectacularly well, they are most of the things one appreciates in CD yet the magic that is vinyl sound is half way out the door.
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