Brock, That’s a nice story, but the OP is talking about a $13K expenditure. For that much dough, he can do a whole lot better.
I only bring this up, because mijo is constantly praising the SOTA products. While I agree that they are an excellent company, and their turntables are well thought out, I would note that for about 10 years I owned a sota star sapphire with vacuum. It was only after I moved on to a Nottingham analog Hyperspace with a motor controller that I realized how poor was the speed regulation on the sota. By comparison between the two, the bass response of the Sota was consistently muddy and piano notes were routinely unstable in pitch, for two examples. All suspended turntables are subject to this dilemma: when you mount the motor on the base and the platter and subassembly are on springs, the belt is subject to stretching as the suspension reacts to external energy. The stretching of the belt inevitably results in speed irregularity. Different companies including sota now address this issue in different ways, but one ought to be aware of it.The simplest solution of course is to mount the motor on the same suspension as the platter, but that brings with it issues related to the vibration of the motor itself, etc.
I only bring this up, because mijo is constantly praising the SOTA products. While I agree that they are an excellent company, and their turntables are well thought out, I would note that for about 10 years I owned a sota star sapphire with vacuum. It was only after I moved on to a Nottingham analog Hyperspace with a motor controller that I realized how poor was the speed regulation on the sota. By comparison between the two, the bass response of the Sota was consistently muddy and piano notes were routinely unstable in pitch, for two examples. All suspended turntables are subject to this dilemma: when you mount the motor on the base and the platter and subassembly are on springs, the belt is subject to stretching as the suspension reacts to external energy. The stretching of the belt inevitably results in speed irregularity. Different companies including sota now address this issue in different ways, but one ought to be aware of it.The simplest solution of course is to mount the motor on the same suspension as the platter, but that brings with it issues related to the vibration of the motor itself, etc.