SME is a brand name of an English company that produces high end tonearms and turntables, whose name has become synonymous with the industry standard detachable headshell mount.

[3][4] It was During the 1950s the company moved away from model making to precision engineering, principally parts for aircraft instruments and business machines.

It received such an enthusiastic reception from friends in the sound industry that it was decided to produce it commercially and the first SME precision pick-up arm appeared in September 1959.

In 1961 a new factory situated in Mill Road, Steyning, Sussex was opened and the Company's name was changed to SME Limited, a less committal title to suit its new activities.

[6][7] In December 2016 the company was acquired by Ajay Shirke with a view to preserving the brand's legacy and extending research and development activities, appointing a new CEO and a distributor for the UK market, Padood.

These arms featured a polished, bright-anodised aluminium [7] main tube with a lightweight headshell, knife edge horizontal bearings, and an anti skating bias provided by a weight that hung by a nylon filament.

Audiophile arms today tend to not use the SME mount, but this is not due to other standards replacing the SME but because audiophile arms now tend to not have interchangeable headshells at all in an effort to reduce mass and improve rigidity, though at slight expense of user flexibility.

The Series III had very low effective mass to fit high compliance cartridges such as the Shure V15 IV.

The Series VA tonearm tube is acoustically inert with a significantly reduced resonance signature, optimised effective mass and a wide cartridge balance weight range.