Audio Technica AT-ART1000X

I really cannot agree with your line of reasoning, dispie. Given the fact that one can buy excellent gear on the "pre-owned" market and that prices are all over the place depending upon age and market obsessions with certain brands over others, there is no useful point in using criteria like "Turntable and phono should be approximately equal price. Cart should be capped at about half of turntable."  If you personally need such guidelines, that's fine, but you are in that case placing constraints on yourself that can cause you to miss out on some surprisingly effective combinations of gear available at very disparate price points. I regularly run a vintage cartridge for which I paid several hundred dollars on a TT/tonearm that cost me about $13,000 total, just because the match of that cartridge with that tonearm and TT is so favorable.  Conversely, I sometimes run a $5K cartridge on a $600 TT in a $2500 tonearm. I guess what I am trying to say is that there is a benefit to leaving yourself open to serendipity by mixing and matching gear regardless of relative cost.  That's why for me there are no rules related to cost.

As long as the arm is compatible in terms of effective mass (in this case the arm should be heavy enough to work with a medium to low compliance cartridge) and is decent enough to not have bearings that rattle, you should be good to go.  Certainly the rest of system is good enough for you to appreciate what any cartridge is doing.  The ART1000x is low enough in compliance (the suspension is stiff), that it impart a lot of energy into the cartridge body which is then transmitted to the tonearm.  If that arm is not good at handling this vibrational energy (i.e., it doesn't damp the vibration well and drain that energy by transmitting it through the arm bearings into armpost and then into the armboard), that vibrational energy feeding back to the cartridge could muddle the sound or even cause some mis-tracking. 

The good news is that even relatively modest arms can do this job reasonably well.  I only heard truly gross mismatch when a friend temporarily mounted an Ortofon Windfeld cartridge on the arm of a $300 table.  The cartridge/arm combination exhibited inner groove distortion and a bit more fuzzy sound that went away when he mounted the cartridge on a much better arm.

There are probably many ways to spend $5500+ on "upgrading" LP performance on the OP’s Technics 1300G.

I’d go ART 20 and perhaps use the rest in a future upgrade of a next level phonostage.

The ART 20 likely isn’t THAT far off in performance(relative to the OP’s existing hardware) with the ART 1000? 

OP’s phonostage is good and gets solid Stereophile review, but we all know there’s always something better. Lejonklou Entity phono preamplifier | Stereophile.com

Once that’s in place, the OP can save for the SP -10-RE-S, a nice arm, THEN get the ART 1000!

Thank you everyone for your constructive posts. Right now my first imparative is to retip my Dynavector XXII MK II so I can exercise my new analog chain, however, my next major investment is to upgrade my Auralic Vega (13 years old) to a LTA Aero dac. Once done, I‘ll be back to the analog chain meaning another cart taking into consideration my Lejonklou Entity. Fun stuff and thanks again for the support

OP…you have some great thoughts and excellent equipment. 
 

I agree with Lewm. Why should we box ourselves into a corner whenever we are trying to decide cost performance ratio and expenditures for our equipment. I don’t buy into that “you should only spend X amount for this equipment when the other equipment costs X mount”. Now, of course, the rationale for expenditures is a personal matter depending on individual situations, budgets, synergy, etc. 

All I can say, is why can’t we embrace modding our systems the same we mod our muscle or sports cars? No one ever says well, you should spend X amount for exhaust, titanium for example, or headers, air intakes, carbon fiber, wheels, tires, etc.

In the end, it’s about delivery and execution and one’s own personal satisfaction. When rolling into a cars and coffee with new carbon brakes and wheels on older sports car, people are more apt to say “wow, wool”, and so I think it should be the same with the audio hobby. Test limits or think outside the box to satisfy your our interests. Have fun and enjoy the musical roller coaster.