Garrard 301 motor and rumble

I would like to give you the unmeasured answer but it will upset Fsonicsmith and you know the answer already along with the solution.

Idler wheel drives do not have a more forceful presentation. That is lay intuition and a psychological bias. All turntables with identical speed stability and identical cartridges and tonearms have the same "forcefulness." 

@fsonicsmith 

No, you just have to replace a noisy idler wheel every couple of months or so. 

The actually pump Sota uses is child's play to replace and readily available. If you can come up with a better way to perfectly flatten a record and mate it to a mat of the same mechanical impedance color me surprised. 

It appears you are an antique collector and not interested in the highest levels of performance. I have an old Nagra Tape Machine on display, beautiful thing. I never use it.  

@atmasphere 

Speed instability is certainly a problem. Most of it is caused by record warping and eccentric spindle holes. The very same irregularities that cause rumble also cause speed irregularity.  The old idler wheel turntables are less speed stable than any high end belt drive table primarily because of the older motors. You could substitute a modern electronically controlled motor so you can have more accurate rumble. Even if you could create an idler drive that were as quiet as a belt drive it would not last long as components wear. 

The point is, unless you are an antique collector do not buy an old idler wheel drive table. There are many excellent modern turntables, either belt or direct drive that are quieter, more speed stable and better isolated. This is not an opinion. It is a matter of fact.  

@fsonicsmith 

Thank you for the compliment.

This is not a competition. You are obviously an antique collector, I am not. The OP's case is typical. 

As for arms, the best Reed offset, pivoted arm is the 2G. The 2P's bearing arrangement is IMHO inferior. The arm I use on the Cosmos is a Schroder CB and the cartridges are the MSL Signature Platinum, The Ortofon MC Diamond and the Lyre Atlas Lambda SL. 

As for whether or not the Cosmos is equaled in performance by any old turntable? The Cosmos is fully suspended, Has a 1" thick aluminum chassis, has a magnetic thrust bearing and the Eclipse drive, one of the best in the industry. The others here can make up their own minds as to whether and old idler drive table mounted on a chunk of wood, stone or whatever is likely to come close in performance. They might look sharp, but that is about it. 

The makers of the finest turntables made today shun idler drive, I wonder why. It was necessary back in the old days to change speeds because we did not have electronically controlled motors yet and nobody had subwoofers. Then the little AR XA came along and blew them all away from a performance perspective. I had a TD124II at the time and a friend's AR was much quieter. Idler drives disappeared from the market and all the radio stations dumped their old tables for the hot direct drives. You can't slip cue most belt drive tables. All those old tables were available for pennies on the dollar and the myth begins. All this is not my opinion. It is historical fact. Today there are much better ways of changing speed than a stepped capstan and a spring loaded rubber wheel. 

@atmasphere 

And there you have it. AC synchronous motors particularly the three phase ones are the best turntable motors because they automatically apply corrective torque. The older motors had to rely on the AC lines frequency which is held within limits but is not as stable as an electronically applied signal which can be changed to adjust speed. The old idler drives might be accurate to lines frequency for a short period. Watch one start up. There is so much initial slippage in the drive as it fights to get the platter up to speed which is why the idler wheel wears irregularly causing speed irregularity and rumble. If you use boosted subwoofers it is virtually impossible to stay ahead of it. The cost of a modern electronically controlled three phase motors is not cheap and may well cost more than an idler drive especially the older ones which when manufactured in numbers where cheap. A CD transport is more complicated and they are dirt cheap. Belt drives are certainly simpler which is perhaps the main reason they are so effective. If you have a thing against belt drive tables Direct Drive is a much better way to go from a raw performance perspective. And, no the belt on the SOTA does not slip as the Eclipse Drive has a soft start up feature. Torquey bastard too. It is hard to stop it. If a record does not seal (warped too much) I hold the rim of the record down with two fingernails at 180 degrees during startup and usually will get it to seal. Am I making the belt slip then? Good question. Next time I start it up like that I'll take the motor cover off and have a look. I have not seen any deterioration in the wow and flutter yet. I am also fortunate in that I can see the speed of the turntable down to 1/1000th of an RPM and it does not waver. 

@tomic601 

Getting cold feet? 

@fsonicsmith 

Wood bases can be a beautiful thing. Might I suggest Macassar Ebony? 

My Dad had this HUGE Rek-O-Kut  turntable with a HUGE ESL tonearm on it, very impressive. No antiskating. Some fool mounted it in a fancy custom cabinet right on the veneered plywood. Talking about feedback and footfall on top of the rumble. Fortunately, he also had an Ampex R2R. That was heaven, a lot of hiss, but heaven none the less.  My first table was a used TD 124II with an ADC Pritchard tonearm soon to be exchange for an SME. That required shoveling a lot of driveways. The TD124 as you are probably well aware had a hybrid drive. The AC synchronous motor drove the stepped pully via a short belt. I guess the thinking was to isolate the drive from motor noise? Then of course it had two platters, one on top of the other with a clutch for cueing.  I never used it.  After a few more Winters of shoveling and a little subversion I managed to procure a Revox A77 Dolby. I guess the Apples do not fall far from the tree. Not that I did not buy or play records, But I was never happy with turntables and I had a bunch of them, After the TD there was a Sony, a Micro Seiki, two LP12s, a Transcriptors , an Oracle and finally the first turntable that actually worked really well The SOTA Sapphire I bought in 1981. It worked so well I kept it for 40 years. Like most of us young lions, children put a lock on the audiophile budget. I might add that all those tables I was unhappy with were belt drives. Direct drive tables at the time were not good. They worked well but for whatever reason did not sound as good as belt drives of the day. Nobody did anything with idler drives back then except maybe a changer or two.

There is more to a car than raw performance. There are the looks, how it talks to you, how it smells and the silly little things it does like unexpectedly opening it's Frunk as if it is giving you a smile. I see no reason why a turntable can not be as such for some people. So, enjoy your turntable, put it in a nice plinth (Macassar Ebony) and be happy. It is what you like.  I would keep a stash of spare idler wheels.

@atmasphere 

I do not know what my dad's old Rek-O-Kut had in it. I'm sure you can upgrade old turntables with more modern drive systems and materials. But there is no way around the noise produces by the idler drive. You can lower it for a time perhaps but it will be back with a vengeance. Granted as a subwoofer user I am more sensitive to this problem but I have never used or listen to an idler drive turntable that did not rumble. Many systems are not capable of projecting a frequency that low but you can see it in the motion of the woofer. Why were rumble filters so popular in the old days?

Any low frequency noise is poison for a system with boosted subwoofers. With my current turntable and I'm sure there are many others, I do not have to use a rumble filter. I do program an 18 Hz very steep filter to protect the subwoofers in case of a mishap.