Every day I see another turntable recommendation...

OP, 👍😊

I would not buy a used turntable under any circumstances. i don’t buy anything mechanical. I would buy amps from a dealer who will stand behind them (ss or tubed).

I can attest to the modern Linn LP12 to be a very fine turntable with the great benefit of allowing many incremental upgrades available to take it to the very top of the line performance. They are stable once set up. The Linn LP12 Majik is $5K… and you can incrementally upgrade it to the top level $30K Klimax.

I can share some comments from my friend / audio dealer who has setup and serviced all sorts of turntables for over thirty years. Many complaints on Linn as well as some other turntables of them not being set up right comes from people setting them up with no idea what they were doing… leaving off a motor screw, sprinkling baby powder inside the chassis, man handling the tone arm, using the wrong screws putting in thing up side down. This kind of stuff will screw up the sound of any turntable.

I used to have a VPI Aries without a suspension, a fantastic sounding turntable… I now have a Linn LP12… a fantastic sounding turntable.

Having owned turntables since the 1960’s and decent turntables since the ‘70’s and audiophile turntables since the 80’s as well as constantly evaluating and listening to them since the 70’s I can assure you the sound quality has improved dramatically over the period particularly in the 90’s - 10’. A 1980’s turntable purchased for $1,000 would be a cost today of ~$4,000. Sound quality… of a good TT in this price range today is much higher quality.

So happens I had an AR turntable from the late 70’s. I treated it with great care. Had it maintained a couple years ago. It was not remotely competitive with the VPI I bought in 1995 and certainly not in the same league as my current Linn LP12.

OP,

You got it. 
 

While I am not specifically with the two Clearaudio models, my experience is that in that price range $2K will make a BIG difference. The Performance DC puts you in a difference class. While you could get a decent streamer there is a sizable performance premium in vinyl in this price category.