People are always complaining about the records when I think it's their rig. While clean records are absolutely essential, the music to noise ratio is more important.
Find someplace where you can compare your rig to a "Sota Star Saphire" TT; that will put you in the ball park of how much you need to spend in order to get a high SNR (signal to noise ratio) They do not require the most expensive cartridges either.