Sme 3012 R

I know this old arm is good but I don’t know why David,Rockitman,Tang,Ron,Mike
Use or will use having top tonearm like Sat,EliteAxiom,Black Beauty,Durand

Why 3012 is so special?
I never had and I don’t understand
Only to know for my curiosity
Regards
Gian

 

At the moment I’m without speakers, as I recently sold my pair of O/96, therefor no alignment changes will take place until earliest after the summer. If I find my self doing it a lot at the time I have speakers again, I will check and see if there is a chance of acquiring one.

Good luck acquiring new speakers.

 

Luck’s got nothing to do with it

 

Luck’s got nothing to do with it

Are you building him something Leif ?

 

No but it’s based on a downscaled version of my speakers. A pair is playing at a friend’s place. Sounds very good….

 

Worth checking into. The jig takes the risk out forward-backward alignment because you use the jig to do that, not the cartridge.

May be I am missing something, the SME 3012r original shell is not slotted, why do we need the jig? Or are you using alternative shells in the SME3012R?

 

May be I am missing something, the SME 3012r original shell is not slotted, why do we need the jig? Or are you using alternative shells in the SME3012R?

That is right. The head shell is not slotted. The jig is a convenience and a brilliant little tool. You can very precisely measure where the stylist hits the scale on the jig, and then remove the head shell from the tone arm, replacing it with the jig for alignment purposes. Then a cartridge that has a hard to see cantilever and stylus isn’t a problem. The jig lets you align the arm on the protractor without using the cartridge and head shell. It is safer and arguably more accurate because the jig has very straight sharp edges which fall onto the protractor for easy alignment. You are spared the need to site the edge of the hedge shell over the protractor with all the error that that can create.

It is simply a convenient tool, which makes the job easier and more accurate.

 

That is right. The head shell is not slotted. The jig is a convenience and a brilliant little tool. You can very precisely measure where the stylist hits the scale on the jig, and then remove the head shell from the tone arm, replacing it with the jig for alignment purposes. Then a cartridge that has a hard to see cantilever and stylus isn’t a problem. The jig lets you align the arm on the protractor without using the cartridge and head shell. It is safer and arguably more accurate because the jig has very straight sharp edges which fall onto the protractor for easy alignment. You are spared the need to site the edge of the hedge shell over the protractor with all the error that that can create.

It is simply a convenient tool, which makes the job easier and more accurate.

Hi Peter

Do you have some photos to give a better representation.

Cheers

 

I would say “very precisely” is quite the opposite of my experience with the jig. It leaves a lot be desired in that regard.

1. You are not aligning anything by the cantilever.

2. Getting accurate location of the stylus on the jig is only an estimate because it varies with how you hold the tool.

3. Aligning with the jig does not take into consideration the location of the stylus under a load.

So the tool is ok, it does help prevent accidents, but overall it’s not something anyone should use who wants a precise alignment. Get a WallyTractor for that.

 

Hi Peter

Do you have some photos to give a better representation.

Cheers

 

1 big dot & pretty thick line. How do u determine the center of the dot with stylus thickness less than 1mil ? But the jig does make alignment much easier

 

Hi Peter

Do you have some photos to give a better representation.

Cheers

I see Peter answered you with his excellent photography. Here's a bit more.

You slip the cartridge in its headshell into the open slot on the jig and find on the jig's numerical scale where the stylus tip points then add 0.5 to that number to account for the stylus under load. Move the cartridge away and attach the jig to the tonearm. Use the number you have to adjust an SME tonearm to get points A & B to zero on the Dennison protractor. It is actually quite simple to use with the 3012R, at least for me.

I did run into a quirk with my vdH Colibris where the cartridge in the headshell was to tall to fit the jig without flexing the cantilever.

1 big dot & pretty thick line. How do u determine the center of the dot with stylus thickness less than 1mil ? But the jig does make alignment much easier

The center of the dot has a smaller dot inside it. Place the the numerical line in the center of the dot.

Fwiw I have the high accuracy UNI-Pro protractor that I use with other tonearms -- it is an excellent tool. I find the DDK jig actually easier to use with the slotless SME because I don't need to adjust the cartridge in a slotted headshell.

 

I see Peter answered you with his excellent photography. Here's a bit more.

You slip the cartridge in its headshell into the open slot on the jig and find on the jig's numerical scale where the stylus tip points then add 0.5 to that number to account for the stylus under load. Move the cartridge away and attach the jig to the tonearm. Use the number you have to adjust an SME tonearm to get points A & B to zero on the Dennison protractor. It is actually quite simple to use with the 3012R, at least for me.

I did run into a quirk with my vdH Colibris where the cartridge in the headshell was to tall to fit the jig without flexing the cantilever.

View attachment 151889

View attachment 151891

View attachment 151892



The center of the dot has a smaller dot inside it. Place the the numerical line in the center of the dot.

Fwiw I have the high accuracy UNI-Pro protractor that I use with other tonearms -- it is an excellent tool. I find the DDK jig actually easier to use with the slotless SME because I don't need to adjust the cartridge in a slotted headshell.

View attachment 151895

You own all the cool toys Tim !

 

You own all the cool toys Tim !

Accumulated over the years. The DDK jig came last year when I got the SME 3012R. I am hooked on that arm.

The Dietrich Brakemeir Uni-Pro I got was the last one when he first offered it in a post on Audiogon in 2011. Later I bought his P2S device. Both quality pieces.

 

Dear @tima and @PeterA ,

The jig shown in the pictures you shared is designed for aligning a cartridge in a slotted headshell. It can’t be used with slot-less headshells—and more importantly, it’s definitely not suitable for sliding-base arms like the SME.

The idea behind these jigs is to quickly set overhang using the slots in the headshell, assuming a standard distance from the arm collet to the stylus tip. While they’re easy to use, they come with several drawbacks:

- They ignore cantilever deflection under different VTFs and different suspensions.
- There’s parallax error due to the distance between the dot on the clear plate and the stylus (as indicated by the blue arrow).
- When the headshell is tightened into the arm collet, the rubber O-ring compresses, affecting the distance between the collet and the stylus. This jig doesn’t account for that. Plus, different arms may screw the headshell in more or less deeply.
- Most importantly, these jigs assume a perfectly accurate Pivot-to-Spindle (P2S) distance is obtained, which is rarely the case. You just can’t drill a hole and mount an arm with 1/10 mm precision. If your P2S is even slightly off, this kind of jig throws everything off.

That’s why these jigs are only used with slotted headshells—for quick and easy cartridge swaps, not for precision alignment. Technics, for example, has offered a similar jig with the 1200 series since the beginning. It aims 52mm from collet to stylus for 15mm Japanese overhang.




I suggest using two-point Dennison protractor directly, without relying on a jig. It’s free of assumptions, and once you align the cartridge to both null points, you can be confident that the overhang is correct. Jigs always come with assumptions—like “if everything is perfect, the overhang will be correct”—but in reality, that’s rarely the case. Again instead of aligning cartridge parallel to the lines on this jig, aligning cantilever as a continuation of the lines on null points is a better approach because cantilevers are rarely parallel to the cartridge sides. The Smartractor you have is also a good choice in my opinion. I use it with Acoustical System arms.

One more thing to watch out for: the spindle hole on most paper protractors is slightly larger than the spindle itself, which can throw off overhang accuracy. It might not seem like a big deal, but the distance between Lofgren and Baerwald geometries is only about 0.5 mm—so small errors can matter.



I’d recommend wrapping a bit of adhesive tape around the spindle to bring its diameter closer to the protractor’s center hole, if there’s a mismatch.

Also, just to be clear—my intention isn’t to criticize your approach in any way, just to share my perspective. Like everyone else, it’s entirely up to you to enjoy your setup however you prefer.

 

Dear @tima and @PeterA ,

The jig shown in the pictures you shared is designed for aligning a cartridge in a slotted headshell. It can’t be used with slot-less headshells—and more importantly, it’s definitely not suitable for sliding-base arms like the SME.

The idea behind these jigs is to quickly set overhang using the slots in the headshell, assuming a standard distance from the arm collet to the stylus tip. While they’re easy to use, they come with several drawbacks:

- They ignore cantilever deflection under VTF.
- There’s parallax error due to the distance between the dot on the clear plate and the stylus (as indicated by the blue arrow).
- When the headshell is tightened into the arm collet, the rubber O-ring compresses, affecting the distance between the collet and the stylus. This jig doesn’t account for that. Plus, different arms may screw the headshell in more or less deeply.
- Most importantly, these jigs assume a perfectly accurate Pivot-to-Spindle (P2S) distance is obtained, which is rarely the case. You just can’t drill a hole and mount an arm with 1/10 mm precision. If your P2S is even slightly off, this kind of jig throws everything off.

That’s why these jigs are only used with slotted headshells—for quick and easy cartridge swaps, not for precision alignment. Technics, for example, has offered a similar jig with the 1200 series since the beginning. It aims 52mm from collet to stylus for 15mm Japanese overhang.

View attachment 151901
View attachment 151903

I suggest using a two-point protractor directly, without relying on a jig. It’s free of assumptions, and once you align the cartridge to both null points, you can be confident that the overhang is correct. Jigs always come with assumptions—like “if everything is perfect, the overhang will be correct”—but in reality, that’s rarely the case. Again instead of aligning cartridge parallel to the lines on this jig, aligning cantilever as a continuation of the lines on null points is a better approach because cantilevers are rarely parallel to the cartridge sides. The Smartractor you have is also a good choice in my opinion. I use it with Acoustical System arms.

One more thing to watch out for: the spindle hole on most paper protractors is slightly larger than the spindle itself, which can throw off overhang accuracy. It might not seem like a big deal, but the distance between Lofgren and Baerwald geometries is only about 0.5 mm—so small errors can matter.

View attachment 151905

I’d recommend wrapping a bit of adhesive tape around the spindle to bring its diameter closer to the protractor’s center hole, if there’s a mismatch.

Also, just to be clear—my intention isn’t to criticize your approach in any way, just to share my perspective. Like everyone else, it’s entirely up to you to enjoy your setup however you prefer.

Thank you for your comments mtemur. Your criticisms do not seem to correspond with my direct experience with the protractor and jig that I am using.

1. This is not a paper protractor. It is a two point protractor made of semi rigid thick white plastic.

2. There is no slop between this protractor and the spindle on the AS2000. David Karmeli specified both diameters. There is a black ring around the hole as you can clearly see from my two photos. It is not slop as you suggest in your post.

3. Yes, some care must be taken when measuring the collet to stylus distance with the jig, but one can prop it up with cards or anything appropriate until the stylus touches the scale, or even to deflect the cantilever slightly to approximate the distance to the stylus under dynamic load. Dynamic conditions include both cantilever deflection due to tracking force deflection of the suspension, but also the forward motion of the record spinning pulling on the stylus. I have observed this when lowering the stylus onto the record. I think, but am not sure, that correcting for the conditions under dynamic load is an approximation, regardless of method used. You can see that my stylus hits the glass scale on the jig from the photos.

4. One can also confirm alignment using the same protractor with the cartridge and shell inserted in the arm to be confident it matches the result of the jig alignment. The problem here is that the SME headshell does not have straight sides and it is difficult to be confident of the alignment. As you point out, the parallax distance is also much greater that the distance of Tim's stylus in his jig, causing potentially even greater error. The beauty of the jig is that it lies flat on the protractor and has very straight and square sides.

5. You raise an interesting point about the compression of the rubber O ring on the SME headshell. Mine is quite hard and does not seem to compress when the locking collet is tightened, but this might introduce a very tiny error, likely less than the deflection of the cantilever when the LP starts to rotate. I suppose one could remove the O ring from the headshell and put it onto the jig for alignment and then return it.

6. I do not know if this protractor was ever designed to deal with non slotted headshells and the SME sliding arm base mount. This protractor does function very similarly to the paper protractor supplied with the SME arms though. There are two null points and a spindle hole. The pivot point does adjust until the stylus meets both null points.

7. I agree that the jig does not really account for a skewed cantilever. My MINT LP protractor was great for that. The cantilevers of my eight cartridges all look pretty straight by eye. Another concern is how square the stylus is glued onto the cantilever. That can be checked with a loupe and I suppose compensated for somewhat by zenith adjustment, slightly possible in the fixed hole SME headshell, but not much. A slotted headshell would be better, but then you have to deal with what happens to the cantilever then.

I think we try to do the best we can with our available tools. In the end, we want to enjoy the music. I have not used this protractor and jig on any other turntable or arm, and I am not suggesting that people use it. I do find it very easy, safe, and accurate for my purposes. It is especially useful for those cartridges where one can barely see the cantilever and stylus. I do not have a lot of room to walk around my turntable, and I now have three arms, so these devices work very well for me.

Here are some photos:

Plastic protractor with black ring around spindle hole showing no slop:




Cartridge in jig showing stylus touching glass scale. Parallax error shows in the photo because of the angle and thickness of the glass. You can see the stylus hitting the glass at 50mm. The suggestion is to add 0.5mm to the measurement to account for total deflection under load, both VTF and pull moving record.





Here are three photos showing the results with the stylus at the two null points and the perspective from above showing the non straight SME headshell sides, which IMO make it very difficult to align a cartridge properly. Pardon the imprecise images due to simple iPhone photos. Such images would not be possible for my Ortofon cartridge where the cantilever and stylus are very hard to see and photograph, making the jig that much more useful. I did also align a Neumann cartridge once on my table which I could not imagine doing without such a jig.

 

1. This is not a paper protractor. It is a two point protractor made of semi rigid thick white plastic.

It's even better then. Another reason to use it directly.

There is no slop between this protractor and the spindle on the AS2000. David Karmeli specified both diameters. There is a black ring around the hole as you can clearly see from my two photos.

Nice to hear that it fits perfectly but in the pictures it looks as if there is a slop. Forgive me for being wrong on that. Again it’s another reason to use the protractor directly.

The problem here is that the SME headshell does not have straight sides and it is difficult to be confident of the alignment.

On the contrary biggest portion of the SME headshell has straight sides, you can check the pictures you shared above if you're in doubt. I used SME before.

Cartridge in jig showing stylus touching glass scale. Parallax error shows in the photo because of the angle and thickness of the glass. You can see the stylus hitting the glass at 50mm.

I wouldn’t recommend doing that — having the cartridge touch the glass — because in that position, you can’t measure the force on the stylus. It’s easy to exceed the VTF limit and risk damaging the suspension wire permanently.

What I’m saying is that the jig adds unnecessary complications. In my opinion, using a two-point protractor directly, without the jig, is both easier and more precise. That said, if you prefer the jig and feel more comfortable using it, that’s entirely up to you — whatever floats your boat.

BTW I think no pardon is needed for the iphone photos you shared, they look great.

 

It's even better then. Another reason to use it directly.


Nice to hear that it fits perfectly but in the pictures it looks as if there is a slop. Forgive me for being wrong on that. Again it’s another reason to use the protractor directly.

The black ring around the spindle hole makes it look like there is a slop, but I assure you there is none.

On the contrary biggest portion of the SME headshell has straight sides, you can check the pictures you shared above if you're in doubt. I used SME before.

Yes, there’s a portion of the hedgehog that is flat, but it sits so far above the surface of the protractor that is not that easy to align. The jig is much more accurate for this.

I wouldn’t recommend doing that — having the cartridge touch the glass — because in that position, you can’t measure the force on the stylus. It’s easy to exceed the VTF limit and risk damaging the suspension wire permanently.

I can see this as a concern, but there was always a risk handling a cartridge. I am much more nervous with the cartridge attached to the tone arm when doing alignment. This is why using this jig is so safe.

What I’m saying is that the jig adds unnecessary complications. In my opinion, using a two-point protractor directly, without the jig, is both easier and more precise. That said, if you prefer the jig and feel more comfortable using it, that’s entirely up to you — whatever floats your boat.

BTW I think no pardon is needed for the iphone photos you shared, they look great.

How would you recommend aligning a cartridge where you can barely see the cantilever or stylus because it’s not exposed like the Colibrí and some others? An SPU is quite difficult, and the Neumann was near impossible without the jig. Even my Airtight was difficult on the MINT protractor to get a loop close enough to see if the stylist was on the line.

 

How would you recommend aligning a cartridge where you can barely see the cantilever or stylus because it’s not exposed like the Colibrí and some others? An SPU is quite difficult, and the Neumann was near impossible without the jig. Even my Airtight was difficult on the MINT protractor to get a loop close enough to see if the stylist was on the line.

If you’re happy, then I’m happy too.

I’ve learned a lot from other members’ experiences and am still learning. Every bit of new information has helped me achieve better, more precise alignment. I shared my concerns about the process and tools you used, but ultimately, everyone has different priorities and chooses different methods, each with its own pros and cons. Whatever suits you is the best. Enjoy.

 

If you’re happy, then I’m happy too.

I’ve learned a lot from other members’ experiences and am still learning. Every bit of new information has helped me achieve better, more precise alignment. I shared my concerns about the process and tools you used, but ultimately, everyone has different priorities and chooses different methods, each with its own pros and cons. Whatever suits you is the best. Enjoy.

I just checked with David Karmeli about this jig. . He told me in fact, it is specifically designed for fixed mounting hole head shells and sliding base arms like the SME. There’s a completely different jig for fixed arms and head shell slots. Another advantage is that there are four reference points on the jig. The three very straight edges and the center spine that has the scale. This makes it much easier to use than the SME headshell with rounded edges. I also find it more accurate. But again the main advantage is not damaging these delicate cartridges in the alignment process and actually being able to see what you’re doing clearly.

 

@mtemur , @PeterA

This reads like an interesting arm-chair theoretical vs hands-on experienced discussion. Thank you Peter for the excellent photography.

Lots of ways to skin a catfish.
I like the relative ease of use and safety factors of DDK's jig used with the 3012R. For me the results I get tell the tale.