Back to basics

The budget is the main consideration. The suggested Rega or Project turntables come completely set up with cartridge for 3 to 5 Hundred dollars and are excellent
Alan

Islandmandan is right. Don´t waste your time & money on suspended decks (maybe except Oracle but it´s quite difficult to finetune). I wasted nearly thirty years with floating decks (lol).
Worth trying is a vintage Japanese direct drive but not the cheapest models Denon, JVC, Luxman, Technics, SONY etc (off eBay). Place the table on spikes and a heavy platform like stone.
For cartridge very compliant SHURE, Stanton, Audio-Technica but not the cheapest models. Try to find NOS AT-160 ML cartridge. The SME III is the perfect match to high compliant cartridges.

Best of Luck !

Depends on budget -but probably can't go wrong with a VPI Traveler and Ortofon 2Mred cartridge.

1. VPI HW19 series. Provides value wayyyyyy beyond its price tag. Excellent turntables. Will smoke out just about anything in its used price range.

2.Technics 1200 if you are willing to do a little mod work.

A very source are the Virtual Systems here. A lot of inspirations and when you find something interesting, read the comments or try to get in touch with the owner for his opinion about it.