General comments on SOTA

I bought my SOTA Sapphire 6 months out of college in 1986 and a year later upgraded it to the vacuum version, then called the Star. It served me flawlessly for 25 years. End of last year I sent it to SOTA and traded it in for a new Cosmos IV. These tables are pretty much bullet-proof. And, SOTA is run by nice folks who truly try to serve their customers over the long-haul. My room setup required a classy-looking TT, and the military look of some competitors' TTs simply would not do. My Cosmos looks like a piece of fine furniture and sounds like a dream. The sum total of the above creates customer loyalty with me. Go get yourself one.

Whilst I agree that it is far better to have a rigid coupling between the motor and platter, on my old Sota Star Sapphire ( pre Cosmos ) I cured most of the speed stability by hacking into and regulating the DC PAPST motor, suggesting most of the early speed issues were caused by motor cogging. Nothing to stop you bolting up the subchassis to eliminate the springs as well on an older model.

Yes, the Papst motor fitted to the early SOTA tt's was a dc servo motor. Papst also made others such as the external rotor ac (3 phase?) motor fitted to the Empire tt's(amongst others) as well as direct drive motors for Revox (B790). I think Papst also had something to do with the Dual EDS dd motors.

I have always been interested in SOTA vacuum hold down technology. When I was first exposed to their product back in the 80's, I think that was their claim to fame, so to speak.

Now I notice they have a line of non-vacuum versions that use traditional record clamps.

Can anyone comment on the effectiveness of the vacuum hold down system vs a clamping system? Is the mechanical clamp down system as good as vacuum and is this a case of diminishing returns?

As far as flattening warped records nothing works like vacuum.
I had a Star for many years and ended up using the platter/bearing and vacuum system from it in a diy turntable... the vacuum hold always worked flawlessly (except for really dished records where you need to find a way to push the edge of the record down till the vacuum grabs).
Recently I"ve made a diy direct drive tt which uses a normal clamp arrangement and while very good I really miss the vacuum of my other tt.