At first, I must apologize for my english skills. I'm living in a french region and I have only scholar knowledges in English.

Let's come to the review.

I discovered the Sota Sapphire by accident. I searched a new turntable, and bumped on a refurbished Sota sapphire of the 3rd generation with some new elements on it. The case was brand new. I had, before, tested a lot of new available turntable, but found the great majority of poor quality. The sota was not a bargain and had nothing really incredible to itself with exception on the different technologies used. But, for me, they are just gimmicks. The suspended sub-chassis rocks mor than it isolate the turntable, and the lead filled counterweight is a nightmare to set up. The quality of some parts are discutable too ; for example, the power supply that seem to come from an old Soundcraft mixer ; or the screw used, that are sometimes basic woodscrews and that will be a pain in the ass the first time you will be forced to make an overall refreshing of this thing. The board that support the arm is too thin and will be a problem if your arm has not a VERY long shaft. Generally, the setup is difficult and the transport from point A to point B is a pain in the A due to several transport screws and nuts that you need to take care of before it could be transported.

At the other way, if combined with the right arm and the right shell, it plays at high level. My setup is a Jelco 750d (with high quality cable tweak) and a Clearaudio Symphony V2 shell. The signal then goes out through a Tom Evans phono preamp with a separate power supply (don't buy the Tom Evans... run in the opposite direction if you meet one), and goes further to some classic Accuphase preamp, through some restek power amp and some PMC fact8 speakers.

No harshness, no audible wow and flutter, everything is pinpointed where it is meant to be. It's an astonishing mix between the best qualities of analogue and the best abilites of digital. Strong dynamic with no compromise in the precision of the bass, perfect medium rendering and subitle highs with no hiss. It's hard to describe a fully contenting "good sound", but this one nails it.

So, will be the result of my review. It's a good piece of gear, but it's not the best price/performance ratio out there and tricky to make work in full splendor. In the other way, it's one of the best sound you can buy.

Stable sounds great perfect synergy with tonearm,suspension is so effective didn't need a engineering degree to set up and tweek for best sound

doesn't look high tech not really a weakness but seems the only negative i've heard from friends/guests

I purchased this table on ebay it came with ft-3 tonearm w/vta adj.and no power supply it arrived in seemingly new condition(as described)w/grado 8mx and no instructions.I found a toll free # ordered power supply(a little pricy, but this is a specialty item)and was sent set up instructions via email by friendly rep later I called with with a silly question and spent nearly an hour talking to a rep who really steared me in the right direction in terms of bang for buck set up I thought I would get the guy in trouble for spending so much time on the phone with some one who really wasnt interested in making a purchase and ended the call out of concern ,Turns out boath the "reps" actually own the company and seem to share my (our) passion for music. Table is now set up with benz lo-4 (550.00 on agon) and audioquest sapphire tone arm cable (for now)(40.00 on ebay) This thing sounds really nice, has never skipped (never) and presents a really acceptable soundstage (I ran out of cash and one interconnect in chain is a 99cent variety!) opinions and impressions vary but I am pleased here and look forward to further degree of resolution that appropriate innterconnect can provide.This set up has enabled me to get my girlfriend open to all different types of music and artists she was sure she did not care for,and can relieve me of the stresses of the day better than any single malt scotch/ten dollar cigar session. I am connsistantly moved by the music and have brought my girlfriend (who thought i was delusional to buy a record player)up to speed on the strengths of anolog.I believe it only fair to point out that my preference is towards a somewhat laidback,romantic listen all day without fatigue sound not "sound effect testing " and this sota is agood fit for me I have heard several nice set ups (nothing over 10,000) and it is clear that no table ive heard sounds clearly superior (most had superior bachelor pad visual appeal though)all were alittle different and the people at sota helped me achieve the type of sound I described to a very satisfying degree to say the least. I am very difficult to please as to the sound of particular instruments namely drums,piano,violin to be brief i am very close to satisfid with everything but can say i now have the best sounding drums i have ever heard on a recording Its almost like Stuart Copeland is right outside an open window without personal guidence from the people at sota I'm certain these results would have eluded me as as the only motivation they had was to be hepful.I think Ive made my impression clear and thank you to Kirk and Donna at sota

Customer Service

the best ive encountered not only in audio but anywhere

Similar Products Used:

denon ha-500, audion phonostage ,bat vk5i,vk-60, jse 1.8 speakers,audioquest sapphire, ruby,caldera

Big sound stage,great pace and speed,good separation of instruments and voices,this and Audio Research appear to be made for each other. great value

no complaints from me

Hi there,ive wanted one of these for a long time and had never heard one,Ive been using a Oracle=Alexandria with a zeta and supex combination.I was told Sota would be a better match for my arm,i thought it would have to be pretty good to beat the oracle.I have to say, if the alexandria is a class c,this has to be a class b,we are very happy,albums that were ok ,even forty year old ones,sound awesome,my stereo set up is now finnished,i believe.For $555 i think it would be close to being unbeatable,performance per dollar .

Similar Products Used:

linn,oracle @ thorens

DEAD SILENT while running. DEAD ! ! ! Solid platter.

Arm changing takes awhile.

I've used this turntable for 3 years. I've only compared it to what I currently own: Thorens 125MKII/MMT, Thorens 126-III, Micro-Seiki DDX1000/Saec308, kenwood KD750 w/XK-50, all these tables are B++ condition. It's a very good table. I use it with the Sota clamp and have no complaints. Any descriptions between the Micro and Sota is spitting hair unless you can hear very miniscule differences. However, it was a few cuts above the rest. The arm is the Linn Basik but today I just picked up a NOS SME-III, I'm gonna use it with the Blue-Pt nude. I'll tell you about it in a few weeks.

Similar Products Used:

Micro Seiki, Thorens 125-II/MMT

Once you start listening to it, it is dificult to stop, i.e it is not fatiguing. sound quality is on par with my Sony 779Es Cd player. But I have a Linn arm on the Sota, which I intend to upgrade & I am only using a Rotel Pre/tuner amp pickup input. Specifically exelent sound stage, goes beyond my Kef 105 speakers, the Sony dosn't. Very good spacual information retreval, it can send shiverers down my back with the right recording.

bass is a little soft, but I believe this comes more from the rotel pickup stage that the turn table, we will see at Christmas when I buy a M/F LP stage.

Vynil is still a great way to enjoy music, if you own more that 250 LP's work out the cost of replacing them with CD's, It will pay to upgrade to a good deck, i bought mine second hand, so instead of $6000NZ it only cost $2000, one of the best Hi-Fi investments I have ever made.

Similar Products Used:

Linn Sondeck, left me cold & unmoved, so i bought the Sony CD.

Relatively easy setup, good suspension, extended bass.

Big and heavy. Dustcover looked ugly and didn't clear my tonearm. Dinky power supply.

Up until 1995, I was using this turntable with an Eminent Technology Model 1 tonearm, Grado cartridge and Arcici turntable stand. Stock rubber feet were replaced with threaded aluminum cones and I may have been using an acrylic mat and beefier homebrewed power supply but I can't quite recall.

At the time I felt that this combo gave solid imaging and extended, tight bass.I was using one of the less expensive Grado cartridges and it worked quite well though it sounded rather dark and airless (I like them, but I never heard a Grado cartridge sound otherwise) Today, I'd probably go back to an inexpensive moving coil design.

I was very pleased overall and think altogether my cost was around $1200 because the arm was secondhand and the cartridge was cheap. Far better, I thought, than the stock Rega (always sounded lean to me) and Linn (lots of potential there but the felt mat and stock tonearm wiring are a joke), about on par with the Oracle (very different sonics-airier, but less bass heft and yes, the stock Oracle PS is junk too) and not quite the equal of the Star Sapphire with acryic mat or the Goldmund which were really out of my price range anyhow. If I hadn't been forced to sell my Sapphire prior to a move, I might still own this combo today. It had it's faults, but I didn't feel like I was missing out on much.

About power supplies: My prior experience has been that using oversized and/or regulated power supplies can make for much improved soundstage and bass definition.

For what it's worth, I've just bought my first "real" turntable since the Sota: An old Sonographe SG-3. I've become really interested in the sonics offered by acrylic platters, and the SG-3 is a CHEAP intro to same. Been even longer since I've used this TT but I recall it being very much worth tweaking.

Similar Products Used:

Oracle Delphi+Magnepan Unitrac, Rega Planar 2+Magnepan Unitrac, Linn LP-12+Ittok, Sota Star Sapphire+ET2, Goldmund Studio+ET2

tracking and alignment

lower bass extention

The sota blew away the linn that I used to have. when mated
to a good cartridge and arm this table extracts the music as
recorded. cartridges used , monster alpha2, benz glider low
output and dynavector karat 23. The arm alphason hr-100s-mcs

Similar Products Used:

linn lp12 , thorens 124

Stability (played thru an earthquake), more immune to room sound than CD is,open highs,lots of bass...easily humiliates all but the latest digital.

Bear to set up RIGHT,power hum to cartridge (power supply was too close to tone arm). Is totally manual (I am getting lazier as I age).

I have been using this table for 19 years now. I got the table in a...well...strange sale in a parking lot in 1983 or so.
The first thing that I noticed on hooking it up was the amazing transparancy compared to my Transcriptor of the time. The bass was deep and tight and the highs nicely extended. The mids sounded like several layers of blankets between me and the music had been removed. I have no idea what the earlier (negative) poster was talking about; tho it is hard to get just right there was no adjustment I could make to get it to sound bad! And once set it stays put..barring any gravitational variances in your neighborhood......
The second thing I noticed is that no matter how loud I played the music I could not get accustical feedback from this table. Just as a joke I set the table ON a subwoofer and cranked it up...no feedback. Amazing. My CD player (all of them in fact) gives up at about 120db. (I know its not music anymore at that volume....). Only way to get it to feedback was to use a sine wave at a multiple of the tone arms resonant freqency...at 120+db....and that required my putting the table right in front of the sub-woofer!
The third thing is that I went and listened to my entire record collection.....what a joy!
I have listened & played with Linns,they are a wonderful (at times almost magical) sounding table but geeze are they touchy. When all is said and done I believe that the SOTA is a more neutral (and certainly more stable) table than the Linn,but I think that the Linn is one of those products that add something special when all is just right.I do believe that they responded to the phase of the moon. My SOTA did have a hum problem caused by a stupid power supply placement,it was easily rectified by my building a regulated outboard power supply (cost $10). Later models came that way.
This table can easily show the differences between cartridges and tone arms,and record mats. In fact any sound I attribute to the table is really a error on my part...the table produces almost no sound of its own. I mean it..with a stethoscope I can hear nothing on the tone-arm plinth.
I have used a variety of tone-arms,from the Lustre,to various Sumiko's (fine arms for the buck),various unipivots, and SME's. I have avoided tweaky linear tracking arms as my friend's experiences led me to believe them to be more trouble than they are worth. I just want to play the darn record!
I do agree that the dust cover is really lame looking...but it was meant to be as accusticly dead as possible.
I am very happy with this table although it is no longer state-of-the-art now...the VPI's can beat it now...but who wants to spend another $5000+ for marginal improvement on a dead medium?

Similar Products Used:

Oracle,Linn,Panasonic,Technique,B&O,Transcriptor,Kenwood,Lirpa.....

stable nuetral reliable

Expensive when new, aged design

My table is an original Sota Sapphire purchased in 1985. Was my fifth or sixth table and was the first that didn't have a sound of its own. Is good enough to not need replacing in my system.

This is the table for someone who just wants to play records about as well as most records are made.
Good basic platter/motor platform that has stable speed, good isolation and decades of reliability.
Newer tables used the Sota Sapphire as their benchmark to beat.

Associated components:
Souther SLA3, Alchemist III Sapphire, Mod Squad tonearm block, Audioquest Lapis.
Naim NAC32/SNAPS (modified), NAP250, NAT101, Celestion System 6000/SL6, Bryston 4BNRB, MIT330, Kimber Kable.

Turntables are blamed for a lot of sounds resulting of the setup and alignment of the arm/cartridge. You can also make any turntable sound "better" using mats, clamps, isolation and unguents. Tweaks are a necessary result from the imperfection of the whole idea of extracting an analog waveform scratched into a piece of plastic.

Soundstage

Not fun

I traded my Rega Planar 3 turntable to get the wood block of a turntable for $1200. After 2 years I gave up sold the wood block for $300 and bought another Rega Planar 3. I would have given up an Analog if I had to keep at the Sota thing.

First the Sota adds much to the sound of the record. It seems to build an artificial soundstage around the music, this is sharply defined usually within the speakers but sometimes extending beyond. This imaging trick is initially quite appealling. The sound is slow and sluggish, bass is extended but soft.

Soon after the Sota purchase I began buying "audiophile" type recordings in order to take advantage of my new high resolution playback system. Over time I found myself doing A-Bs and rubbing my chin as I came up with new found audiophile terms to describe things I was hearing. Few recordings were satisfying and I was researching the various upgrade paths available to the Sota owner. In hindsight this was a very embarrasing time - trying to make a 2K+ turntable/carttridge sound good???? While preparing to spend $1200 for a suspension upgrade I decided to give digital another chance, I found a CD player in the Black Hole at Icredible Universe for $79.00. Previous to my Sota purchase I had twice attempted a digital source in my system but analog was so much better I gave up on both attempts. I hooked the Sony up and withing 1 minute of the first song I knew that Sota blows. I was not rubbing my chin or thinking of the next upgrade, I was hearing music again, music that I had missed for the previous two years. What - Digital is kicking analogs butt?

I dumped the Sota. Got the Rega, foot tapping again, then upgraded the CD to a Sony ES model. Analog rules! Wood blocks suck!

Associated Components
Alphason arm
Monster Alpha Genesis Cartridge (excellent)

Similar Products Used:

See review summary