Does Anyone Know the History of the Early Sota Turntables?

One interesting tidbit in this letter is the mention of the Panorama speakers SOTA released. There is an ad out there for a pair of the speakers on the other side of my state, and they have been listed for quite a while. If I were a collector the speaker would be worth seeking out...but I do not have room for them. Still they are tempting!

@neonknight When SOTA was marketing that speaker was during the early-mid 90s, during the short period when Allen Perkins was with them. We showed with them at CES; I think that was about 1991. Allen had moved from Minnesota to California to work with Sumiko (SOTA); he had been previously employed at House of High Fidelity here in St. Paul, who was a SOTA dealer. IIRC Allen had a lot to do with the design of that speaker. 

@atmasphere Any chance you can provide any details about their build or sound? 

@neonknight That was a long time ago! It was not a large speaker though and IIRC was a 2-way.

A well conceived magnetic bearing should have no "bounce" in response to external energy like footfalls, etc. If it did, you could have the above problems, especially on a TT with a spring suspension.

@lewm Do you happen to know how this is achieved (a well-conceived one, that is)? I’d be real curious to learn. The benefit of a vertical-thrust magnetic suspension is the reduction in friction. The downside being you now have a suspension that can trap energy when excited. And most mechanisms to damp that energy would create far more friction than was saved in the first place.

Clearaudio’s implementation has the downside that they pile LOTS of platter mass on top, and then the magnetic thrust is only "just enough" to oppose this, plus a few pounds for clamping. So when the platter gets disturbed, there’s quite a bit of displacement and visible low-frequency oscillation (and in your woofers if you’re unlucky enough).

Mulveling, Are you saying that your platter in effect bounces up and down on its magnetic suspension when sufficiently disturbed? So far as I know, the first fully maglev bearing is on the Verdier.  SOTA have it now I think. My Kenwood LO7D platter is partially suspended  in the vertical plane by magnets.  There are others besides the Clearaudio.  Anyway, the Verdier bearing is solid as a rock.  So is my Kenwood bearing, albeit it should be as the platter does make contact with a solid thrust pad while the magnets just reduce the burden. I don't actually know of any maglev bearing that has much give in it so as to allow the platter to move up and down with room disturbances.  Nor can I really say that is a horrible thing. I just ran it up the flagpole to see who would salute it.  But you can imagine that the SOTA mag bearing ought to be solid, because the Cosmos also has a spring suspension. You would definitely not want the platter to be excited while also the spring suspension is excited.