belt drives can have speed control, either mechanically or electronically, and almost all that I've seen do
My rec?
Skip the Turntable and buy a better DAC, feed it from a hard drive-based media server, and look forward. It is almost 2010, and Edison invented the record in 1877!
Well.... you did ask...
I agree COMPLETELY! In fact, after posting my reply and then looking at my Systemdek table just sitting in its box for most of its life, I ran a for sale ad on AudioAsylum (recc'd as good place to sell by another TS member).
That being said, it seems vinyl has made a comeback of sorts, and some people are still really into it. Not me and you......
My music buying days were in the prime of vinyl, starting around '70/'71. When CD's hit the market was when I learned the ropes of live recording, and that completely absorbed all of my musical experience for the next 20 years or so.
In all of that time, I bought about 20 cd's, in total. It was just not a format that I liked; that is, until CD-R hit the market.
Now I have hundreds of shows on CD-R, and I still have about 30 commercial CD's, with the additional 10 or so given to me by bands that I was recording.
I have about 12+ linear feet of properly stored LP's, and about six hundred 78's. I'm not changing formats anytime soon in this life.
So, when the CD's have rotted away, and the DATS have flaked off, and the HDD servers have crashed, the vinyl and shellac will still hold the music for hundreds of more years into the future.