Given your confusion, I would recommend you buy the best Rega with the best rega cart you can afford. This way there are no adjustments and tweaking you have to do and you can relax and listen to records. BTW, your statement that you want to buy something locally that you can see and hear before buying is probably the most intelligent thing I’ve read here in a long time. Problem with most of the Tt’s is that the arms can cost more than the table. I have a Basis and the arm was over 4K years ago. Probably up to 5k by now.
Every day I see another turntable recommendation...
After digging into this topic, I am convinced now I need to go a bit higher on this first vinyl set up. I think all in, I am prepared at this point to go up to $5k, for the table alone, not including arm or cartridge.
But frankly, being on this forum is like drinking from an information firehose. I have learned a bunch and yet somehow, I am less convicted than before.
With that in mind, to narrow down the decision, I am want to restrict myself to things I can buy, hear and, if necessary, service locally. My local dealers stock, AMG, AVM, Basis, Clearaudio, Michell, Musichall, Pro-ject, Rega, VPI, so I am likely restricted to those brands. I am certain my view will change by the end of this thread.