Sota Millenia vs Kuzma Stabi reference vs VPI HRX

Good to see you looking at getting a TT. I'll chime in for the HRX to balance out the opinions.

The HRX is a great sounding table, comes with an easy to use tonearm with probabaly the easiest to use repeatable VTA adjustment, SDS speed controller as well as clamp and the oh so very useful outer ring, is well priced and availability or resale is easy. 2nd arm wands are able to be swapped in & out, in about 10 seconds with only VTA to then adjust.

The downside is that the air bladders leak a bit. The new squash ball suspension is good thou. It is rather large, so space to sit it might be an issue.

Hi Shane. I have read elsewhere that the VPI HRX is a bit dry sounding. Also, I want vacuum hold-down. The Sota seems to tick all the boxes for me.

To be fair,a few of my close pals have VPI tables/products(mostly the very latest TNT w/12.6 arm,and latest heavy platter)and they are anything but dry.Quite superb actually.

Amfibius

Not sure dry sounding is the right word. It is certainly a leaner sound than the richer sounding older TNT's. Some may just classify that as neutral.

If you are looking at vacuum hold down, certainly SOTA and Basis are the two obvious options.

Amfibius wrote:

I do not know if modern Sota's have a more damped suspension, but the Kuzma is certainly nicely damped. I only wish that Kuzma offered vacuum hold-down, that would seal the deal (pun not intended) for me.

I have owned a Cosmos and currently own (and sell) Kuzma. The Kuzma Stabi Ref suspension is spring-in-oil, with resonant frequency of about 2 Hz and doesn't dance. Leveling and setup couldn't be much simpler. As for vacuum hold down, I don't miss it with the Kuzma which has an excellent clamping system. It gets out of the way of the music.