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RE: On Automatic and Manual Turntables...

Posted by John Elison (A) on September 4, 2017 at 21:39:08

In Reply to: On Automatic and Manual Turntables... posted by Lee of Omaha on September 4, 2017 at 15:18:35:

You can take this train-of-thought even farther and ask why don't turntables have electrically switchable speeds and fine speed adjustment along with built-in strobes. The four thousand dollar VPI Prime turntable requires you to manually change the belt to a different pulley size to change speeds from 33 to 45. Furthermore, it has no fine speed adjustment other than moving the belt up and down the motor pulley to slightly different size diameter positions.

My ten thousand dollar Sota Millennia turntable has electrically switchable speeds and even fine speed adjustment, but no built-in strobe. The method Sota employed for making the speed electrically switchable and adjustable was to use an inexpensive off-the-shelf stepper motor and associated control circuitry. It's a rather neat idea because the motor and electronics are very cheap. However, stepper motors produce significant cogging so the belt has to be extremely thin and flexible so as not to transmit this vibration to the platter, which is fairly massive to maintain reasonable speed stability.

It's obvious to me that belt-drive turntables are very inexpensive to manufacture but their price tags remain exorbitant because the market is so small that profit margins must be kept massive so the companies can remain in business. As a result, most, if not all of the luxury features have been deleted so all you get are the basics in today's niche turntable market. In other words, "Less costs more" -- a whole lot more. ;-)

Such is life!

John Elison

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