I was interested to read that review, as I own a SSM recently upgraded with the rim drive. I have been pretty dissatisifed with it, and have had some problems which Mr. Fremer doesn't seem to have had.
My turntable and motor drive sits on a Ginko Cloud 11, and the whole thing shakes when the motor is put on. At 33rpm, the shake and wobble of the arm/cartridge is 'acceptable' but at 45rpm, it is all over the place and there is no way I am playing my precious Fantasy and Blue Note 45rpm reissues on that. I spent days trying to vary the distance between deck and motor and can only get to an acceptable wobble at 33rpm. One possible solution would be to remove the Ginko and put the table on the FE Pagode, but the presence of such wobble suggests an out of balance weight in the rim drive or an imperfect connection with the superplatter. Since the table's speed depends on a smooth mating of the rim drive with the platter, any imperfection would affect speed stability, which is unacceptable. I didn't have such an issue with the belts, even on the cloud 11. Two friends of mine with the same 'table report various degrees of the same problem, but mine seems to be the worst.
My other issue is with the tracking ability of the JMW-10.5i arm. Used without anti-skating, as VPI recommends, my arm has never been able to track satisfactorily the second test track on any test record (+14dB), let alove the torture tracks.
I think I was most happy with my first purchase of the SSM, with the 9" arm etc.. that was fantastic value at $5500. Subsequent upgrades have been doubtful value for money, with the rim drive being very questionable.
I was interested to read that review, as I own a SSM recently upgraded with the rim drive. I have been pretty dissatisifed with it, and have had some problems which Mr. Fremer doesn't seem to have had.
My turntable and motor drive sits on a Ginko Cloud 11, and the whole thing shakes when the motor is put on. At 33rpm, the shake and wobble of the arm/cartridge is 'acceptable' but at 45rpm, it is all over the place and there is no way I am playing my precious Fantasy and Blue Note 45rpm reissues on that. I spent days trying to vary the distance between deck and motor and can only get to an acceptable wobble at 33rpm. One possible solution would be to remove the Ginko and put the table on the FE Pagode, but the presence of such wobble suggests an out of balance weight in the rim drive or an imperfect connection with the superplatter. Since the table's speed depends on a smooth mating of the rim drive with the platter, any imperfection would affect speed stability, which is unacceptable. I didn't have such an issue with the belts, even on the cloud 11. Two friends of mine with the same 'table report various degrees of the same problem, but mine seems to be the worst.
My other issue is with the tracking ability of the JMW-10.5i arm. Used without anti-skating, as VPI recommends, my arm has never been able to track satisfactorily the second test track on any test record (+14dB), let alove the torture tracks.
I think I was most happy with my first purchase of the SSM, with the 9" arm etc.. that was fantastic value at $5500. Subsequent upgrades have been doubtful value for money, with the rim drive being very questionable.