SME N-500
The Archive's unresolved file: a model number that shows up in period literature only as somebody else's crossover designation.
Overview
There is no confirmed SME N-500. The Archive's research file for this entry came back with no data. Every source in the batch covers SME's 3009-family tonearms, not an N-500, and none of them can be borrowed to fill the gap. Whether the N-500 is a tonearm, a cartridge, an accessory, or a designation that never existed is not established here.
What the string "N-500" does reliably describe in the period literature is a crossover frequency, not an SME product. A January 1972 issue of Audio carries a classified listing for a pair of JBL 3150 (N500) dividing networks among a large professional horn system. The N500 there means a 500-cycle crossover point. The same issue's construction feature describes a builder auditioning several commercial networks for a two-woofer system and settling on an "Altec N-500" for its least phase shift across the 500-cycle crossover region. In both cases the designation belongs to JBL or Altec, not to SME. If "N-500" turns up on a component, check first whether it is a crossover label or a part number from another manufacturer.
The string also turns up in a scanned document on small-scale business definitions, where "N500" is shorthand for the Nigerian naira figure of 500,000, repeated across regulatory thresholds. That is archive noise. It is flagged here so future researchers do not chase it. It also shows how easily a short alphanumeric string gets misattributed across scanned documents, which is the most plausible explanation for an "SME N-500" in the first place.
No specifications, production years, original price, design description, or market data can be reported. The Archive would rather run a short, honest page than a long, invented one. If an owner has a component genuinely marked SME N-500 - a headshell, a mounting plate, a counterweight, an export catalog number - that primary evidence is what this entry needs. Until then the N-500 sits in the unresolved file, and the crossover networks and currency abbreviations that share its name are the only documented uses of the designation.
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