The SME 3009 is a favourite o mine, especially the 3009 unimproved. Recently, a customer contacted us with a request: to rewire his beloved 3009 unimproved. That's nothing unusual; we rewire a lot of vintage 3009 and 3012 tonearms. However, this request was quite strange, since the customer had a TT with shallow plinth, he needed to have the tonearm converted from the down-facing connection (long can version) to side-facing wiring.
The tonearm before the conversion
The wiring before the conversion
We designed a special kit that allows our rewire kit to be installed on originally long-can designed tonearms, but with the wires looking sideways and shorting the total length of the tonearm's base
This is a shot of the kit. The elements are made with UV resin, the short can is shielded with copper foil
After the conversion, and the rewiring, the tonearm looks like this:
Now our client can enjoy the quality of our rewire combo, and have his favourite tonearm sitting properly into the TT.