Thanks guys for the feedback so far. It's a shame that the TT upgrade path is no longer viable, as you both suggested, given either the lack of new parts availability or the price competition from elite used rigs. I actually enjoyed my hw-19 jr. rig immensely at times, hardly being able to fathom which types of audible improvements in particular would result from doing the full monty to it or by going whole hog on an entirely new rig.
I'll awlays wax nostalgic whenever I reflect back on the time my long-time girlfriend and I hooked up my then newly acquired Cardas Hexlink phono cable, and using the very rig I described above and two pairs of Sennheisers (one of us with the HD580, the other with HD600 and periodically swapping), we had the most sublime Beatles and Stones experience imaginable to us. It fact it so far surpassed even the previously enjoyable experiences playing our clean 1st pressing originals and MFSL discs back on our old Rega Planar 2/Grado Platinum combo, that to this day she and I use that experience as the reference by which we qualify or dismiss digitally sourced rock as natural "organic" sounding.
Hardly any analog fans in audio forums ever mention this, but even distortion sounds better on vinyl. Especially the type resulting from JImi Hendrix's use of chain gang guitar amplification (what I call directing the distorted output of one guitar amp into succesive ones which further deranges the sound so as to confer a "sonic signature" - good example of this is the album version of Axis:Bold as Love as well as the album intro), when heard on my vpi sounds has less of a white noise character, and more of an earthy one (i.e. actually captures the sound of hot tube and warm solid state Marshall guitar amps).
But alas, I am more into classical, and I guess I'll can always find some superior table somewhere down the line at an affordable price. Just hope it doesn't take digital so long to catch up to analog - in those qualities unique to the more uncolored example of the latter l - that I have to wait until the kids which I haven't even decided to have yet, have kids of their own and send them off to college before convenience can come without compromise.
Now let's hope that when my two SACD copies of Let it Bleed arrive, that they're as good as some say. THERE BETTER BE SOME DAMN AIR! lol
I'll awlays wax nostalgic whenever I reflect back on the time my long-time girlfriend and I hooked up my then newly acquired Cardas Hexlink phono cable, and using the very rig I described above and two pairs of Sennheisers (one of us with the HD580, the other with HD600 and periodically swapping), we had the most sublime Beatles and Stones experience imaginable to us. It fact it so far surpassed even the previously enjoyable experiences playing our clean 1st pressing originals and MFSL discs back on our old Rega Planar 2/Grado Platinum combo, that to this day she and I use that experience as the reference by which we qualify or dismiss digitally sourced rock as natural "organic" sounding.
Hardly any analog fans in audio forums ever mention this, but even distortion sounds better on vinyl. Especially the type resulting from JImi Hendrix's use of chain gang guitar amplification (what I call directing the distorted output of one guitar amp into succesive ones which further deranges the sound so as to confer a "sonic signature" - good example of this is the album version of Axis:Bold as Love as well as the album intro), when heard on my vpi sounds has less of a white noise character, and more of an earthy one (i.e. actually captures the sound of hot tube and warm solid state Marshall guitar amps).
But alas, I am more into classical, and I guess I'll can always find some superior table somewhere down the line at an affordable price. Just hope it doesn't take digital so long to catch up to analog - in those qualities unique to the more uncolored example of the latter l - that I have to wait until the kids which I haven't even decided to have yet, have kids of their own and send them off to college before convenience can come without compromise.
Now let's hope that when my two SACD copies of Let it Bleed arrive, that they're as good as some say. THERE BETTER BE SOME DAMN AIR! lol