Thoughts on moving from a 1200G to Sota Saphire or above

Everyone knows I am a big Sota fan. I was just informed yesterday that after nine months of being PATIENT my Cosmos passed final inspection and is being shipped today. 

The question is will a Nova Vacuum ( I do not think the Sapphire is available with vacuum.) make an improvement in sound quality over a Technics 1200G? 

You have the addition of several features with the Nova. It has a well designed suspension which will isolate the record from everything but an earthquake or a three year old. The background will be darker. If you have footfall problems they will disappear. Vacuum clamping assures that the entire record is at the level of the mat. Even small elevation changes can result in pitch changes. You have a choice of tonearms within the confines of the design. Tonearms such as the Kuzma 4 Point 9 and the Schroder CB are significantly superior to the arm on the Technics. The result will be steadier pitch, better tracking and less distortion. 

I believe the overall quality of your system is good enough that you will notice a significant improvement. But it is a $10,000.00 investment. On the other hand it will be the last turntable you will ever need to buy.

Mike

@chakster , a removable head shell kills it for me. Only Kuzma gets that one right.

@lewm , $10,000 is for a Nova vacuum and a Schroder CB. Package price.
My own belief is that even with the Nova's standard AC synchronous drive the difference in speed accuracy will be inaudible but that is a belief not a fact. Perhaps someday you and I can get together and run that study.
I also forgot to mention the Nova's magnetic bearing will also lead to less rumble and blacker backgrounds.

bfoura, that is a fine combo and down the line you can have it upgraded to the new drive and bearing as well as change tonearms if you get the urge. A new tonearm board is always two weeks away.

The one thing that instantly endears people to the Sota is it's near total insensitivity to anything going on around it. Sing, dance, jump up and down, set off an M80. It could care less. For those who are tired of tip toeing around their turntable it is a blessing. 

@lewm , @chakster , I do not think stability with removable head shells is a problem at all. They lock down tight. I do not like additional contacts with low level voltage devices and I do not like the additional mass it entails. Regardless of how light a removable head shell set up is it is lighter without it. I also do not like low compliance cartridges. Given the exact same stylus a low compliance cartridge will wear out records faster than a mid or high compliance cartridge. Just a fact of life. I also think more compliant cartridges generally track better. I think multiple tonearms and/or turntables is a better solution if you are using different cartridges for mono and certainly 78's. I did the multiple cartridge deal for years and what happened was I always listened to the one I liked best and the others sat hording money I could use for other purposes. I now have a collection of 78's to deal with and eventually I will record them all to the hard drive via Channel D's program. I already have a 78 cartridge for that purpose. I do not switch cartridges for the few mono records that I have mostly jazz from the early 50's. All this amounts to personal preference nothing more. 

The Cosmos is on it's way. It will arrive this Tuesday. I have started prepping the arm. I fashioned a finger lift and a locking arm rest  for the Schroder. Mr Schroder does not like extraneous stuff hanging off his tonearms. The arm rest will mount to the Sota's plinth and the finger lift was added to Schroder's cartridge mounting plate. 

There must be something wrong with me. Maybe I need to smoke more weed?

Like these https://www.kimber.com/products/carbon-int

bfoura, I see the direct drive gang is jumping all over you. Try getting your old SP-10 with a loose bearing or failing servo fixed. The Sota you can always have rebuilt and updated/improved. Can you have an old SP10 updated to modern specs? 
Tech Das, SAT, Dohmann and others suspend and isolate their turntables for a reason. Sota developed the first stable suspended turntable, a design that has remained essentially unchanged for 40 years. Sota marketed the first vacuum clamping turntable and have refined the design over 35 years. It works as advertised and is dead silent. It's vacuum pump/regulated power supply is all of 11" X 7" X 5", small in comparison to most. Just these two features put it's performance miles above what you can get with an old SP10 tossed on a chunk of wood, slate or granite with a record weight. Yes, direct drive tables can be very accurate in regards to speed. That characteristic is meaningless relative to good belt drives in the context of paying records which are extraordinarily inaccurate. I just got two new Blue Note records, Lee Morgan's The Rajah and Ambrose Akinmusire's On the Tender Spot of Every Calloused Moment. Both were pressed off center. You can watch the tonearm swing back and forth slightly with each revolution. This creates wow far in excess of any properly functioning turntable as do changes in elevation.
But, hook a Sota and an SP10 up to an oscilloscope and you will see all sorts of rubbish on the SP 10's trace that is absent from the Sota's. Most of this is at very low frequencies. Put the Sota's dust cover down and it will get even quieter. Mark Dohmann related to me in an email that he is working on an isolation dust cover for his Helix tables. 
The performance gains from isolation and physical control of the record far exceed those of what you would gain over a trivial increase in speed stability. How good is the Sota in regards to speed stability? All I can say is that once the table is playing the speed does not budge down to 1/1000th of a revolution per minute under any circumstance. The Eclipse/Roadrunner drive displays speed down to 1/1000 of an RPM. No strobe required. 

  

@chakster , I set up the new table to Lofgren B and I very much like it. Most modern pressings do not go in as far. Very few records go in farther than 65 mm and at 65mm Lofgren B has the same harmonic distortion it has at 90mm, 0.03% Lower than all alignments over the vast majority of the record. This is also the first time I used the SmarTractor. What a beautifully made device. I didn't even bother with the magnifier it is so easy to read with the naked eye and a bright light. They should sell the magnifier as an option to bring the price down.
https://www.analogplanet.com/content/uni-din-versus-l%C3%B6fgren-b-just-clarify

@lewm, you are probably right. I used the term "harmonic distortion" as that is what it is called in the link I posted above which I believe is actually another way of expressing tracking angle error. Harmonic distortion is a misnomer. Thanx for pointing that out.

@chakster , if we are to believe the graphs in the link Stevenson is lowest right at the edge of the label (60mm). Very few old records go in farther than 65mm. In the middle of the record Stevenson is handily worse. Just from a look at the graphs I can't understand why anyone would use Stevenson. I must say that I have not tried to compare alignments from a sonic perspective because it is so difficult to do in a way that one could have confidence in the result. Angle error is a very simple issue to measure. I am sure we all agree that optimum is an angle error of zero and that the farther away from zero ones gets the worse the result will be. Whether or not this is something you can actually hear is another issue. I do not share your taste in tonearms but a lot of other people do. 

@chakster , I do not play, and I would venture to guess most of us do not play 7" singles. That is a non issue for most of us.
Those tonearms are terrible. Because of their mass they have much higher levels of inertia and distortion, they are not neutral balance and their vertical bearings are high above the record surface. They are very pretty and have an air of precision about them. An SME V will handily trounce them all not to mention such arms as your Reed and my Schroder. Those arms were by products of the late 60s. Everybody except the Japanese have moved on. If you need a tank tonearm get a Kuzma 4 Point 14. 
Stevenson may have been a mathematician but in todays world his theory is wrong. Modern cartridges and styluses have much less difficulty with the inner grooves and all you have to do is look at the data. It is pretty obvious that Stevenson has the highest levels of error across the board.
The only time Stevenson might make sense is if you are running an SPU in one of those tank tonearms. You would then be replicating the conditions Stevenson knew. 
A picture tells a thousand words https://www.analogplanet.com/content/uni-din-versus-l%C3%B6fgren-b-just-clarify