Best Tonearm and Cartridge for 4K or under for restored Garrard 301

But not quite sure why Miller even posting here as he is a confirmed idler drive hater?

At the risk of making the obvious mistake of thinking logic has anything to do with an uberwaltz post, having never said even one word one way or the other about idler wheels- EVER! Find it uberwaltz and I will GIVE YOU MY TURNTABLE you useless piece of... nevermind,like we all don't know anyway- so no merit as usual to that. But even if I had- which I have not!- I'd be a lousy idler wheel hater seeing as my own freaking turntable is rim drive, which is essentially a variation on an idler wheel!
Check it out! https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367
So much for the hater part. Now on to the question of why I'm posting here. Which is obvious to everyone else. Since the OP is asking about tone arms, I am letting him know about tone arms. Unlike uberwaltz, who went way off topic into idler drive just to gratuitously slam me for something I never did.

Doesn't make a lick of sense. Just like uberwaltz. Well I did say its a mistake to apply logic to any of his posts. Right again.

                 

Can you pls elaborate on the One continuous wire from cartridge clip to RCAs..  I use RCA cable from back of the TT to PPA990.

Yeah that's what you want to avoid, the interconnect between the table and the phono stage. What you want is an arm with integral RCA. In other words the cable and RCA is hard wired into the arm. One continuous wire. 

This is because the signal coming off the cartridge is the weakest faintest most delicate in all of audio. The next stage in the process, the phono stage amplifies this weak signal by the most amplification in all of audio. The last thing you want to do in a situation like this is subject that signal to a whole bunch of unnecessary connections. Every one of which is prone to micro-arcing and all the many other imperfections inherent in every connection.

As far as setup goes, do it yourself. Its not nearly as hard as its made out to be. Its not nearly as expensive. You can download and print alignment grids right off the web, and then with a $20 Shure stylus force gauge and some tweezers you are set. 

The reason this is all you need is because all the fancy jigs and meters and whatnot, all they really ever do is get you close. Once you get close all the fine tuning is done by ear. When you are tweaking VTF .05g by ear and the cartridge spec is a range twenty times as big you begin to understand why it just doesn't matter what gauge you use. When you are tweaking VTA by equally tiny amounts and doing it all by ear you begin to understand what a waste an expensive protractor is. And when you do all this stuff and see and hear and it all sinks in then you actually know what's going on and realize that right there was worth ten times the effort- and you will not hesitate to do it again, and again, and it only gets easier and easier. So just do it.

Be aware, Fremer like it fast and technical. He's very up front about it so you should know but just making sure you do. In spite of that he also seems to describe things very professionally accurately- something I know from personal experience as the guy actually called me one time and we had a good half an hour talk about tables and arms.

I would skip the linear as being way more headache than they're worth.

Other than sound quality, which you will figure out for yourself, the two things I find matter most are ergonomics and a direct signal path. I would never again buy an arm that requires an interconnect. No way. One continuous wire from cartridge clips to RCAs is the way to go. Next to that I would pay attention to looks and feel and ease of use. One fussy comment and I am gone. Too many fine sounding well engineered arms to be messing around with anything else.

One factor on that to keep in mind. When you hear people talk about the magic or matching or whatever... think of computers. How many after they spent untold hours and finally figured out all the BS you have to go through to make a PC do what you want, how many after all that have the strength of character to admit, I shoulda got a Mac? All that stuff I went through, its not even one click on the Mac. I hook it up, it knows I hooked it up, it just happens. Nobody, ever, said that. Its just way too hard to admit they wasted all that time on a colossal mistake. Same with arms and tables. Nuff said.