I have a brand new Sota Cosmos and owned a Sapphire for 40 years.
I have seen Feickert tables but never played with or listened to one. They were never turntables I personally would consider. No suspension, no vacuum, no dust cover. Three strikes.
The Sota is not a glitzy turntable. The plinth is nice in wood but plain in comparison to other tables its price range. The corners are usually said to be dove tails. They are not. They are finger joints which are easier to make and assemble. Areas that did not affect the turntable's performance are done in a straight forward, simple and inexpensive way. But, where it counts it has it in spades. The new tonearm board is a work of art, weights a ton and broke a 1" drill bit drilling the hole for the Schroder CB. The board was fortunately unharmed. The drive is dead silent and deadly accurate. The dust cover is another work of art, vastly superior to the old one. The vacuum system is also dead silent and it works great. It has only failed to seal two records both of which were so badly warped they were sent back for replacements. Vacuum will not remove abrupt warps. It will flatten a record that is not perfectly flat and it will dampen the entire record perfectly making the record function as if it were as thick as the platter. Record weight does not matter anymore. The sub chassis which you can only see with the platter removed is another work of CNC art.
Mounted is a Schroder CB arm which fits the Sota perfectly and is a wonderful arm. Very pleased with it. The cartridge is a Soundsmith Voice which is a high output Sussurro. I have been impressed with it also but it is still young and I need to listen more. It certainly tracks very well. It is set up Lofgren B. The other arm that I really like on Sotas is the Kuzma 4 Point 9. I prefer the Schroder but it is $1300 more expensive. he Schroder fits better because the tonearm cable exits under the tonearm board not over.
This combination is so silent I have looked on several occasions to make sure the lift is down. It is as stable as a turntable can get. There is very little that bothers it. You can turn the volume up and tap hard anywhere on the plinth or dust cover and you will hear nothing. I use a conductive sweep arm. On the old table I did not have vacuum or it's special mat. If I dropped the sweep arm on the record while playing you could here a soft thump. On this table you here absolutely nothing. No matter what I put on the record the speed returns to 33.333 +- 0.002 rpm You can change the speed (pitch) in 0.1 rpm increments if you want.
The performance of the Nova is going to be very similar especially if you get vacuum and the Eclipse package. The big difference is the material the sub chassis is made of. The Cosmos is 1" thick aircraft aluminum and the Nova is a composite with an aluminum bracket under the tonearm board.
The company is great to deal with. I have talked to both owners, Donna and Christan on many occasions. The day the table arrived Christan called to make sure I was ok with it. You will hear this from many others.
Because of it's suspension and vacuum clamping system the Sotas are in a whole different league the the Feickerts and many other similar turntable making the Sota's some of the very best values in high performance turntable. Other turntables of similar performance are the Basis tables, the SME table and Mark Dohmann's Helix turntables, all considerably more expensive than the Sota and not near as nice to use. All these other turntables are suspended (isolated) but, their sub chassis are exposed. You can not put your hand down on them without getting everything bouncing. The Sota's sub chassis is covered, floating inside the plinth. You can put your hand down on it to cue the record. You do not have to be so careful around it. The dust cover is attached to the plinth's cover. You can raise and lower it without bothering the tonearm. You can turn the volume up and bang on it and you hear nothing. The other turntables do not even have dust covers although Mark Dohmann related in an email that he is working on one for the Helix that will probably be hinged from the power base.
The only negative comment I have so far is that I personally think the finish on the wood could be better without adding much to the cost. I will be refinishing mine shortly to match the system's cabinet.
Pictures of the table are on my system page. Please feel free to ask any questions.
