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

@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. 

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

removable head shell kills it for me.

For you, but not for me, nearly all Japanese tonearms have a removable headshell (or even removable armtube with integrated headshell), it’s an amazing feature to swap cartridges for those who have many cartridges.

It’s much more difficult on my Reed 3p for example (check my system)

I have a Sapphire on order. I have a number of cartridges and was excited to find a NOS Jelco 750D so that i can easily swap them out. 

The audio establishment sold us the idea that headshells were inherently unstable mounted at the end of an arm wand, so now we’ve got a lot of expensive tonearms with fixed headshells. Around the same time they sold us the idea that bass and treble controls and loudness controls were mucking up the sound quality of our music, so they’ve been deleted. Rightly or wrongly these “innovations” that were near to universally adopted have certainly reduced the cost of manufacture, while prices have gone skyward.