Calling all Sota fans.

My friend with the Doehmann sold it in favor of a major downsizing to his system, associated with moving to a smaller domicile.  He now uses hi-rez digital streaming exclusively.  Sold all his LPs, too, and gave me a few for free.  So in essence, nothing replaced the Doehmann.  This was a year or two ago.  Since then he bought a bigger house (now 40 miles away from me, in Baltimore) and seems to be sniffing around for a return to vinyl.  It's a long story, but I will respect his privacy.

Can't beat a cement floor; I agree, laid on bare earth.

Jay, where do you live? There’s a train coming through any minute now. Pop your fave LP on the old Cosmos and tell us how it all works.

Don’t you think that when Doehmann finally develops a vacuum hold down system, he will add $20,000 to the price? I do. You are probably looking at a $90,000 turntable with vacuum. By the way, when my friend decided to sell his helix, I could’ve purchased it for $25 or $30,000, but I declined, because I am quite happy with what I have.

I have had extensive listening experience with the Doehmann helix in the context of a very high end system that belonged to my neighbor. His phono stage was the Ypsilon plus either the Ypsilon SUT or an EMIA SUT.. Cartridges were top of the line Lyra. Schroeder tonearm. It was truly sublime. 

Mijo, You are correct in thinking that the Phoenix Engineering speed controller, which was adapted for use in the Eclipse option, sees the motor as a 3-phase AC synchronous device.  Yet both SOTA and Bill Carlin refer to the new Eclipse motor as a DC type.  I got hung up on the same question. 

Meantime, is SOTA actually back producing product? Mijostyn has been waiting many months for his Cosmos. No doubt they were negatively affected by the pandemic like many other small companies.