New analog rig(t.t.,tonearm,phono drive)

If you like Vertere, honestly, go with it. Half the pride and joy is how it looks. Seriously. Because I have yet to hear the table that doesn’t sound good, or at least can be made to with the right arm, etc. It really is a package deal.

Part of why I go for separates, it is so much easier to wind up with a killer rig. Because let’s be honest, few of us will drop $10k on a table. $5k might be pushing it. Or even less. But you take that $5k or whatever, same amount of money, but put into just the arm you have one seriously fine arm. This is so much easier to do with an arm bought separately. A used Graham for example hardly depreciates. What can you get for the arm that came on a table? Any table? Unless it was sold separately no one knows. So the answer is: not much. This all makes it way easier to build a really fine rig. Buy your table, you could start with a workhorse RB300. Whatever. Point is its a modular one piece at a time approach. You can do this also because these things last virtually forever. Decades.

Mine was built just this way, and is over 16 years old now.

Your pods are dry. The table should not "shimmy". The pods are nothing more than a spring inside an aluminum cylinder. There's paddles attached to the spring. The whole thing is supposed to be full of silicone damping fluid. The idea is the spring isolates the table from movement and the fluid damps the spring. So you have the spring but not the damping. Its questionable whether the damping helps or not, you would have to add to find out. But for sure its gone. 

Incidentally, when it comes time to ship the pods are removed, compressed, and they screw together with an o-ring that prevents the fluid leaking out. That was how after 10 years I discovered my fluid was all gone! 

The Herron sits right at a price/performance point where there's only maybe one or two (if that) close in performance, and you are looking at into five figures to do significantly better. My Conqueror is a dozen years old. It replaced the Graham 2.2. Its not merely better, its in another league. Plus with OL the phono leads are integral so no money spent on interconnects. At this level that alone is worth a grand or more. Not to mention the headaches of finding the right one.  

Tone arm mounting is simple. Most of the people convinced its all so hard have never actually done it. Once you do its like, D'oh! No big. I made a couple trial plinths before settling on the one I have now. Would not believe how much money people wind up spending simply because they are afraid to try. 

With arms, as with turntables, its hard to go wrong and you pretty much get what you pay for in terms of sound quality. That's not all there is to it though. These things have to be set up and used, and some designs make that a whole lot harder or easier than others. I bought the Graham simply because it uses a removable armwand and comes with a jig that makes cartridge alignment super easy and precise. But all the extra connections are bad for sound quality, something I never realized until going to the Conqueror. 

In general I think that arms that are made by tone arm companies like Origin Live tend to be way better than arms made by turntable companies like VPI. Likewise turntables made by turntable specialists like Kuzma tend to be better than VPI. Not to knock VPI, same goes for Pro-ject, Rega, anyone else making all in ones. 

Not to knock any of those brands. They are what they are. They exist for a reason. Not everyone is capable of or wants to do the work of figuring out what to use and how to put it all together. Those who do can achieve truly outstanding results. If they do it right. Those who aren't into all that can still do quite well buying one of these other rigs. Its as important to understand yourself as the product you are buying.

The Basis 2001 was my first table. With Graham 2.2, Benz Micro, ARC PH3SE it served me well for many years. The silicone damping fluid slowly evaporates away- if you haven't checked yours is probably gone. That's the only problem with this fine if low-tech deck. Simple and direct are good things in a turntable, and the Basis has them in abundance. 

This table also served as the, ahem, basis for mods that eventually moved me up to building the Miller Carbon turntable. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 

What I did was to first upgrade the power cord to the Basis motor. Then experimented with different belts. Then upgraded it with the early Teres Audio motor. This gave me enough hands-on experience to appreciate what changes what on a turntable.  

The 2001 is really just a 1" thick piece of acrylic with some holes drilled in it. You don't need to pay no thousands of dollars. You could drill holes in some other materials and try em out. Many things will sound better than acrylic. But its a lot of work. The best is to use an extremely dense and highly damped material which is what I did, BDR Source Shelf. Its kind of expensive but way cheaper than prices you are quoting. 

I got lucky and was doing this at a time when Teres Audio was around and building extremely high quality tables and components for great prices. Now if you can find something like that go for it, lotta work but highly recommended. But if you want to just buy a table that's fine too. 

Fortunately the saving grace with turntables is there's hardly any bad ones. Virtually all are excellent, or at least can be with the right arm, cartridge, and phono stage. 

There's no right or wrong way to go about upgrading. For example, the kind of money you're talking could get you the superb Herron VTPH2A phono stage (about $3000) and Origin Live Conqueror arm (about $6k) and you would be shocked how much better that will be. You will also at this point be done with arms and phono stages! Those are pretty much lifetime keepers. Then later on some day mount the Conqueror on a better table, be amazed all over again. There's no one right way to do this.