One combination I'd recommend is Stone Melee/ WP.
With Stone Melee you get all the audio as well as the visual of SMASH - more fun and as much (if not more, don't know the exact numbers) damage as SS.
@SteelRat; @SteelRat2
"Angelina my love, I'm a genius!"
"Of course you are darling, that's why I married you. Physically, you're rather unattractive"
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Stone/Elec would be fun. Stone's uber active mitigation ability would largely help Elec's squishyness, and Elec's Lightning Reflexes and Power Sink would help Stone for recharge and endurance-hungryness. Stone Melee puts out some sick single target damage with high recharge builds, assuming your endurance can handle it. Grab Hasten.
My "main" brute is Stone / Fire and is the most fun I've had on a brute in ages. Consume nicely deals with the end problem, hasten and a full set of Kinetic Crash IOs in hurl boulder help with SMs slow recharge. Damage is insane, there's lots of noise, but the squisyness of firey aura can be a bit of a problem at times (although with all those recharge bonuses Healing Flames is usually up fairly quickly).
Playing him really gives a feeling of "Rage Incarnate".
Interstingly I did consider doing a "Son of Volkanik" and making him SM / Lec, for all of the reasons you mention. Think I'll be giving that another look 
@SteelRat; @SteelRat2
"Angelina my love, I'm a genius!"
"Of course you are darling, that's why I married you. Physically, you're rather unattractive"
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QR
Weirdly i find the low lvls between about 6 and 20 ish to be the best times for fury generation i find that im normally far more powerful at these lvls than my team mates (provided there not brutes) and so generate a far greater threat attracting more foes to me and so building my fury lovely and high allowing me to smash things with greater fury. Later on its more difficult as the other ATs catch up and i then have to compete with them for foes.
So far the best method I've found (and by far my favorite) to counteract my team mates getting better is to throw caution largely to the wind and the more fury i have after a spawn the less i care about what I'm facing next SMASH 
Also on the subject of what to pair with /SR I'm finding duel blades pretty good (lvl 11 so far) fury builds quick thanks to the speedy attacks and it tends to only take the old 1, 2 of the first 2 attacks to dispatch most minions leaving me free to carve up the higher ranks.
Brute SMASH!