I have no personal allegiance to any mechanical thing except as far as they do the best job at what they are designed for. The Technics tables are the result of massive amounts of R&D as well as tooling and materials quality. I have confessed on these pages to using an SL 3300 on a daily basis, I am now disassembling the table to see if some of those mods will work on mine. Also I see that Denon has released a new table that looks real nice. It is of course DD but it is also designed to work with the Denon cartridges which are an all time favorite. List is at the 500$ mark but to anyone looking for a reasonable alternative to all those belt-drives at that price point I think you get more for your money playing with the big boys like Technics and Denon; they just have the resources that the small guys don't. While that may not be crucial with amps, it is with the very tight bearing tolerances and hardened alloys required of turntables. The machining and materials are where the money goes. Needledoctor has the Denon if anyone wants a look.