To Ralph Karsten; this person absolutely misunderstood your point about powerful motors eliminating stylus drag-induced speed variation and yet you refrained from correcting him.
@fsonicsmith I missed his comment.
FWIW, We stopped making our model 208 when Technics came out with the entirely revamped SL1200. I regard it as a better machine and have one in my home system. With a different platter pad...
The old idler wheel turntables are less speed stable than any high end belt drive table primarily because of the older motors.
I don’t think this statement is accurate. The synchronous motors on some of the vintage machines are excellent as long as the AC mains frequency is stable. If the machine is properly serviced out, there isn’t any stretch between the drive and the load. So they should be more speed stable (and in practice this is borne out), but a lot depends also on the platter mass. The Empire machines got their speed stability from both the motor and the platter being very effective flywheels. Only a few of the idler drive machines had platters of that kind of mass.
I think the main reason you don’t see idler drive machines in production now is the cost of making the idler and speed change mechanism (since they are not made in large quantities). They require more service to keep them running properly. Its a lot easier to engineer a belt drive with only two moving parts which is also easier to fix since most of the time its just a belt replacement, plus anyone who wishes to be a turntable manufacturer has to compete with Technics, whose direct drive system is competent, reliable, well-priced and overall excellent.