bfoura, I see the direct drive gang is jumping all over you. Try getting your old SP-10 with a loose bearing or failing servo fixed. The Sota you can always have rebuilt and updated/improved. Can you have an old SP10 updated to modern specs?
Tech Das, SAT, Dohmann and others suspend and isolate their turntables for a reason. Sota developed the first stable suspended turntable, a design that has remained essentially unchanged for 40 years. Sota marketed the first vacuum clamping turntable and have refined the design over 35 years. It works as advertised and is dead silent. It's vacuum pump/regulated power supply is all of 11" X 7" X 5", small in comparison to most. Just these two features put it's performance miles above what you can get with an old SP10 tossed on a chunk of wood, slate or granite with a record weight. Yes, direct drive tables can be very accurate in regards to speed. That characteristic is meaningless relative to good belt drives in the context of paying records which are extraordinarily inaccurate. I just got two new Blue Note records, Lee Morgan's The Rajah and Ambrose Akinmusire's On the Tender Spot of Every Calloused Moment. Both were pressed off center. You can watch the tonearm swing back and forth slightly with each revolution. This creates wow far in excess of any properly functioning turntable as do changes in elevation.
But, hook a Sota and an SP10 up to an oscilloscope and you will see all sorts of rubbish on the SP 10's trace that is absent from the Sota's. Most of this is at very low frequencies. Put the Sota's dust cover down and it will get even quieter. Mark Dohmann related to me in an email that he is working on an isolation dust cover for his Helix tables.
The performance gains from isolation and physical control of the record far exceed those of what you would gain over a trivial increase in speed stability. How good is the Sota in regards to speed stability? All I can say is that once the table is playing the speed does not budge down to 1/1000th of a revolution per minute under any circumstance. The Eclipse/Roadrunner drive displays speed down to 1/1000 of an RPM. No strobe required.
Tech Das, SAT, Dohmann and others suspend and isolate their turntables for a reason. Sota developed the first stable suspended turntable, a design that has remained essentially unchanged for 40 years. Sota marketed the first vacuum clamping turntable and have refined the design over 35 years. It works as advertised and is dead silent. It's vacuum pump/regulated power supply is all of 11" X 7" X 5", small in comparison to most. Just these two features put it's performance miles above what you can get with an old SP10 tossed on a chunk of wood, slate or granite with a record weight. Yes, direct drive tables can be very accurate in regards to speed. That characteristic is meaningless relative to good belt drives in the context of paying records which are extraordinarily inaccurate. I just got two new Blue Note records, Lee Morgan's The Rajah and Ambrose Akinmusire's On the Tender Spot of Every Calloused Moment. Both were pressed off center. You can watch the tonearm swing back and forth slightly with each revolution. This creates wow far in excess of any properly functioning turntable as do changes in elevation.
But, hook a Sota and an SP10 up to an oscilloscope and you will see all sorts of rubbish on the SP 10's trace that is absent from the Sota's. Most of this is at very low frequencies. Put the Sota's dust cover down and it will get even quieter. Mark Dohmann related to me in an email that he is working on an isolation dust cover for his Helix tables.
The performance gains from isolation and physical control of the record far exceed those of what you would gain over a trivial increase in speed stability. How good is the Sota in regards to speed stability? All I can say is that once the table is playing the speed does not budge down to 1/1000th of a revolution per minute under any circumstance. The Eclipse/Roadrunner drive displays speed down to 1/1000 of an RPM. No strobe required.