Basis Turntables: Worth it or Ripoff?

nkonor and ctsooner, I just backed up and read your posts. Hang in there. There are new biologics coming out every day. Medicine will figure it out.
In the mean while I have several disabled patients I take care of at home. One was a music teach at a local high school. He has Becker's muscular distrophy. He is set up with an Apple Mini and a 6 TB hard drive connected to a 75" TV. He can buy high res files on line and play any music he wants right from his wheel chair. One night we loaded all his CDs into the hard drive for him. No it is not a turntable and it is digital but quite a few of the high res files are better than their vinyl counterparts more than likely due to different mastering. Some of these files will definitely drop your chin.

Mike

As others have said Basis makes great turntables. I am not a fan of their tonearms as they are unipivots which are inherently unstable.
The problem with Basis Turntables is SOTA and to a lesser extent SME.
My best friend has a Basis Debut with a Graham tonearm which I have mounted cartridges in several times. Both SOTA and SME tables perform just as well and in the case of the SOTA are much less expensive and IMHO better looking. I am just not a fan of the techno plastic look. Some would argue that SME tables are the best of all and they are if you want to mount a long tonearm as both SOTA and Basis will only take short ones. The SME can also be configured to handle very heavy arms like the Kuzma 4 Point 11 and 14 if you get the 20/12 or the 30/12. I do not include the Kuzma Stabi M in the mix because it is not a suspended turntable in the classic sense. It is an isolated turntable. It will not handle low frequency excursions like foot falls. 

ctsooner, I have not listened to either Basis arm so I can not make any comments on how they sound. I have spent a lot of time playing around with Graham arms. I will not even look at unipivots for myself because (and this is going to sound a bit harsh) they are mechanically incompetent and you can see it just lifting the arm! A tone arm has to hold the cartridge rigidly in the appropriate orientation to the record with only two degrees of freedom, up and down, side to side. Wobbling on axis is just plain out of bounds. I do not think it takes a mechanical genius to see this. It is popular because it is a cheap easy way to make a tonearm. You just have to plop the thing down on a single point which in the case of VPI arms wears out frequently. It is much more expensive and difficult to use fine bearings and get them oriented and loaded perfectly. 

ctsooner, you should check out SOTA tables if you get a chance. Look at the tonearms the reviewers prefer to use in their systems.

Mike

@xagwell , enjoy and use your new turntable in good health!

@larryi, every 250 hours the belt should be replaced. That is usually around two years. What happens over time is the belt gets polished from the spindle rubbing on start up and stopping. Traction becomes irregular and wow and flutter increases. When I replaced the belt on my old Sota wow and flutter went from 1.4% back down to 0.5%.

A friend of mine has a black Debut without vacuum. It is still running great and is a very attractive unit. AJ and David Fletcher of Sota and Sumiko fame were friends. AJ took David's design and spiffed it up. If you remove the cover of a Sota you will see a rough version of the Debut. AJ also borrowed the vacuum design from Sota. David probably did not care as his company was really not in the ultra high end market. He cared more about value. The concept of a suspended table goes back to the AR XA. The LP12 comes next.  LP12 owners complained about the the LP12's sensitivity. I'm not sure but I think David owned one.
Just looking at it made it skip but, it was the best sounding turntable in it's day. David attacked that problem with the Sapphire creating the first reasonably stable suspended turntable at a very reasonable price. AJ being the perfectionist that he was took the design to the extreme. I live ten miles away from the Basis factory and cam close to buying one on several occasions. AJ loved having guests visit the factory. He loved audio. RIP

@larryi, for all intents and purposes my Sota is a Basis Debut with a wood cover on it. Great minds think alike:-)