SME IV To V Upgrade, Worth It?

pindac and dover, thanks for your input and advice, which I intend to take. I am going to make life easy for myself and stick with the SME IV; paid for, installed and works perfectly IMHO.

@mgattmch The IV is going to play your music for you fine and dandy.

It will be a Tonearm that appreciates in value, especially with escalating cost to purchase via the SME Present Marketing Strategy.

I am sitting on my one since this change was made, the seen appreciation in value is not the only motivation, it has been loaned in the past to others with a interest in purchasing a arm as a A/B Comparison Model.

Additionally it has been loaned to two Tonearm Designer Builders as a Arm to compare their own work to.

I own one of these arms as a result of the comparisons carried out.

At present the IV and a owned Cart' are in the possession of one of the Tonearm Designer /Builder for our next stage of evaluations to take place.

I look forward to the invites and thoroughly enjoy the time spent to supply evaluation from a given demonstration.

It has taken approx' 2 Years to get to this place where the New Tonearm is performing to a extremely attractive presentation, all energy was for the performance and it has been a nice place to get to, where there is time available to create a guise that has Marketable Aesthetic and will have a Broad Appeal.

Bling does not improve performance in general, but it does ooze panache and assists with stirring a interest. 

I do apologise for not having a much more recent evaluation of a comparison between the V/IV to share with you, even though up to about 18 Months ago the V 12" was encountered regularly during a year. 

Unless the same TT, Cart' and Mounting for the TT are in use, it does make it a difficult comparison to report on. The comparison experience I Shared with you is as close to this control as I can recollect. A HiFi Show is usually not with the best system/rooms interaction to make a absolutely reliable evaluation.  

@dover 

Thanks for the clarification.

On that basis I agree with the upgrade path. As a Townshend user - a damping trough works at the head-shell - not the base of the arm. As to. the calibration - i assume having a toolset overcomes that issue?

I know that the V was conceived to mount MC's that became popular in the early 80's. Funny thing was that it didn't work on Linn Sondeks that were popularised as the greatest turntables ever. 

Les Wong who owned Walrus Systems rated the Breure higher on which the Sumiko MDC800 and now Brinkmann is based. That said I think they were a pain because the end-weight limited the cartridges that worked with it. Anyway I digress.

I'd upgrade