Thoughts on moving from a 1200G to Sota Saphire or above

BTW the most popular tonearm upgrade for old (cheap) SL1210mkII and related was Jelco. I don't think for the new SL1200G the Jelco is better than the stock "G" series magnesium tonearm.

SME is probably in the same price category as Reed, but not better in my opinion, Reed is the most beautiful (and fully adjustable). They may not have a proper distribution in the USA and hence not as popular in America as much as old British SME and TriPlanar, but Reed is an amazing tonearm than available with different arm tubes (different mass) and different length.

I have a pictures of Reed on Technics SP10 mkII in my System TWO.
Upgraded Sl1210mkII and SP-10 mkII are in my older System ONE.

@lewm,

"The audio establishment sold us the idea that headshells were inherently unstable mounted at the end of an arm wand, so now we’ve got a lot of expensive tonearms with fixed headshells. Around the same time they sold us the idea that bass and treble controls and loudness controls were mucking up the sound quality of our music, so they’ve been deleted. Rightly or wrongly these “innovations” that were near to universally adopted have certainly reduced the cost of manufacture, while prices have gone skyward."


Same thing happening with phones and chargers - its green, and it’s good for the planet etc.

Similar thing happened in the 1990s when the loudspeaker manufacturers jumped on the MDF bandwagon.

As usual it’s nothing more or less than about reducing manufacturing costs and maximising profits.


The tricky bit is selling this reduction of choice/lack of freedom to the customer.
This is where the clever marketing comes in.

Some of the best arms ever built had removeable headshells.

Personally, I’d play with different cartridges before moving on from your current table. I’d question that a table upgrade alone at $10k will make a bigger difference. I’d go cartridge, then preamp before a different table. But I love your table. I have the GAE. it’s so strong, neutral, dynamic, and not fussy. 

Not fussy is one of the attributes I like about the 1200G too. I would say it’s neutral. I think dynamic is the descriptor where I’m looking for more. But, other things could contribute to that like cart, preamp, speakers, etc. I listened to a couple other album sides using the AQ Water IC from phono to preamp and with the other two album sides I could here a more dynamic presentation compared with the IC I use regularly. I can’t help but think how what the improvement would be with another Water going from phono preamp to line stage. Investing in two Water IC’s would be close to $1400 for me. I know there would be an improvement but from a cost benefit ratio, not sure I would hear $1400 of improvement. If I were to move on to more phono specific IC’s I’d look at companies that allow for an upgrade at most or all of original purchase value like with Transparent Cable or similar. 

Nothing will give you more than another cartridge without changing anything else in your system. 


Room treatment can give you a lot. Room analysis is FREE at https://www.acousticfields.com/