SOTA NOVA, HR-X VPI, Technics 1200G recommendations?

You can buy new IKEDA VTA base, it’s the same. The original B-60 is old and very hard to find (even replica). 

I owned the SOTA Sapphire, V1.   Hands down the best table I’ve ever owned.   You could do nuclear testing in the room and that table never missed a beat.   It was as close to flawless as I’ve seen.   I don’t know about their current products, but I wouldn’t hesitate to buy well maintained older tables.

An elephant could stampede past my turntable with no Ill effects. It’s where and how you mount it that matters. I’ve never once heard a skip or a blip while it’s playing. Solid turntable shelf mounted on an equally solid concrete wall. A music hall mmf 9.3 or 11.3 would be my choice. Hard to beat either for the money. 

Chung, once you are use to a Sota the other tables will drive you nuts.
Just get a Noba Vacuum. Jelco is out of business and I think you are headed in the wrong direction with a low compliance cartridge. You just increase record wear. There are many medium to high compliance cartridges of the highest caliber. Just put the most expensive Origin Live arm you can afford on it. Stay away from unipivot arms!!

The FR64S won’t work on a SOTA - it’s too heavy and the B-60 (or Ikeda base - I have both and I like the newer Ikeda better) might not even fit in there anyways. The FR64S is over 3 lbs. A tonearm can be up to 2.5 lbs max on a SOTA Nova suspension, as I recall. The lighter FR64fx (2.2 lbs) on the other hand, works GREAT on a Star / Nova and is an ideal combination with a lower-compliance cartridge (Koetsus, Ortofon Cadenzas other than the higher compliance Black).

I had a Star III updated to Nova V specs. It’s lovely. But the new Nova VI series introduces a lot of serious technological & material advancements over the V. They could have just gone to labeling it "Series X". It's quite likely these tables are now highly underrated. It’s worth a long look, at least.

I too realized the value of SOTA’s suspension when I got a high-end Clearaudio Innovation table and observed just how UNHAPPY that new table was on a crappy rack that the SOTA had handled extremely gracefully. And I need either a vacuum hold down or a ring clamp to bust edge warps. I don’t get high end tables that don’t supply or facilitate this; that would drive me absolutely NUTS.

The HR-X and Technics are classics too, you really can’t go wrong any way here. Just continue to carefully consider all the considerations you’ve been considering :) I wouldn’t use any VPI tonearm with a lower compliance cartridge (maybe with the "dual pivot"...maybe). And in my experience there’s not much practical benefit to 12" arms other than it looks cool.