Does Anyone Know the History of the Early Sota Turntables?

@neonknight  @lewm  That would make two of us. More than anything vacuum clamping results in amazing pitch stability and lower low frequency background noise as long as the record is reasonably concentric. There is no other downside. I will never buy a turntable without vacuum clamping. Sota's current system is extremely quiet. In my set up it is totally inaudible. The only kinks in operation are you have to turn the table off to remove the record and the vacuum generates an amazing amount of static charge on the bottom of the record. I deal with this problem by using my own formula of record cleaning solution that will not allow the record to collect a charge. This fluid is currently being evaluated by Sota. The only solution to stopping the table for every side is to get use to it. 

My memory is not the greatest, but I do think the initial vacuum tables were regular Sapphires before the Star was released. I never used any of the early vacuum tables. My first vacuum table is my current Cosmos which is only about three years old. The only time the Cosmos has trouble clamping a record is if the record is dished. It will clamp the concave side, but not the convex side even with help. With the use of Sota's reflex clamp I have yet to have a record not seal with the exception of dished records. 

@atmasphere  Do you remember what they used on the Gen 1 table then? A rubber mat? This one came with a felt one but I fitted it with a rubber and cork one I had available. 

@neonknight IIRC the original mat was acrylic.

Oracle makes an excellent patter pad that would be well suited on there.

Definitely not rubber, for sure.

Do you remember what they used on the Gen 1 table then? A rubber mat? This one came with a felt one but I fitted it with a rubber and cork one I had available. 

 

Depends what you call Gen 1.

 IIRC the original mat was acrylic.

Definitely not rubber, for sure.

That's not correct - some time pre 1984 the original Sota came with a lossy blue mat - with the sponginess and feel of wet rubber.

The acrylic mat came somewhere around 1984, I remember the first supermat system ( for non vacuum Sotas ) which consisted of a revised acrylic mat (slightly translucid) with a rubber underlay introduced in 1985.

I was a distributor for Sota at the time.

The acrylic mat has since been through many revisions from the mid 80's.