gofar99 Messages: 1940 Registered: May 2010 Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Hi Everyone, I just got a Sota Moonbeam turntable and thought I would give a short report on it. Sota is an American company that has been doing some rather exotic turntables for years. They specialize in vacuum hold down ones. Think in terms of very expensive. To cater to those of us that are not made of gold they have introduced two that are more conventional and a lot less costly. The Moonbeam is the least costly at retail of $750US. At first glance it looks both rather odd and crude. Really it is not when you start to examine it closely. The first impression is that it is on stilts. It has three tall (5-6cm) adjustable screw in feet. Also the platter (acrylic) is raised above the pilth by the thickness of the sub platter (perhaps 2cm). The board is quite large (about 45cm wide, 35 deep and 4 thick). Several finishes are available (see their web site http://www.sotaturntables.com/newtables/moonbeam.htm ). It is a composite of about 7 layers. The tone arm is a variant of a Rega. The overall look is spartan, but sort of European in style. There are no flashing LEDs, no auto start - stop and so on. It is all manual. I installed a Dynavector 10X5 (with a ruby cantilever and line contact stylus by Sound Smith). It took a little fiddling to get the anti-skating dialed in. This seems to be an issue with some Rega arms. I finally settled on a setting of 1 (gm?) with a tracking force of 2gm (recommended by Dynavector).
Speed accuracy is right on according to my strobe. The motor is a 24 pole AC one designed for computer use. It is quite sufficient to drive the TT. It is belt drive.
The sound from the combination was excellent. Gobs (new high tech term) of detail. Very quiet both in operation and when the stylus was in an empty groove.
My only beef is that the supplied (and in this case wired internally) RCA cables are bit on the cheap side. This is also a common feature of many OEM Rega arms and can be fixed if wanted.
A nice thing about the TT is that it will accept anything a Rega will. I am considering an upgrade for the future of a "Moth 251" or an "Origin Live" arm for it.
A good if not particularly inexpensive turntable, worth a look if you are in the market. Now I only have three others that are gathering dust.
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they have introduced two that are more conventional and a lot less costly. The Moonbeam is the least costly at retail of $750US. At first glance it looks both rather odd and crude. Really it is not when you start to examine it closely. The first impression is that it is on stilts. It has three tall (5-6cm) adjustable screw in feet. Also the platter (acrylic) is raised above the pilth by the thickness of the sub platter (perhaps 2cm). The board is quite large (about 45cm wide, 35 deep and 4 thick). Several finishes are available (see their web site 
