SOTA cosmos turntables

Ive owned most of the Sota line and currently have a cosmos iv. I have directly compared it to many of the best out there with the same arm and cartridge and am convinced you'd have to go way up the food chain to best it. Look at the features, a jeweled bearing, advanced suspension, super stable and accurate motor with supply and a flawless vacuum. I was very happy with my nova but the cosmos is really an amazing upgrade and as Sirspeedy has pointed out that even at full retail its an amazing bargain. There are many great tables out there that you would be very happy with but if you poll most Sota (particularly cosmos) owners youll find they've become converts for life.

You have a great tt/arm combo. upgrade your cartridge and later you can raid your 401k and buy a cosmos with a triplanar or sme V or graham and a ridiculously expensive cartridge and then upgrade the rest of your system and build a purpose designed listening room. Thats what I did.
Merry xmas

Rocky, I think youd be very happy with a star. The caveat being that if you buy one used it may need a trip back to Sota for a bearing repair and platter work if it has the older lip and some of the old ones have noisy pumps. Kirk can make it like new for you so factor that into your offer. Sota has a slow turnaround as they are a small family owned company but they will treat you well and it is well worth the wait.After owning many "highend" tables once I got my star I was a convert for life and have moved from the star to a nova and finally to a macassar cosmos IV all of which were refurbed by Sota. Honestly the star will give you most of what you get with the cosmos.
good luck and good listening

Rocky, you will still need to use your reflex clamp. The vacuum improvement will be more noticable on some records than others, on a flat 180gm disc there will be very little difference btwn the vac on or off but on some records the difference is bigger and this of course depends on the resolution of everything downstream. As far as the motor is concerned the more accurate the speed stability the better the sound period. I dont think any one component or change will generally yield a large "wow" factor, improvements are usually incremental and in high end audio the magnitude of improvement is generally over exaggerated when being discussed.
Rick