Return to analog

Thanks for your help. After the two days of driving many miles, many tables, and some serious budget adjustment. I ended up with a Nottingham Hyperspace/Spacearm and a Dynavector- 17d2 MKII. Setup was very easy and the table is playing. After adjusting my budget to almost 5K, I hope this will be my last analog rig. I will post a review after break-in and I spend some time with it. Again thanks for your time.

Plenty of good advice here, including some fine 'tables and arm/catridge combinations. I've read up on the Denon cartridges, supposedly very good and very reasonably priced. You may want to consider mounting a Denon on the 'table/arm of choice. Before you blow your budget on the various playback hardware and such, try to leave some room for a record cleaning machine. By far the most important part of an analog set up is the records themselves, clean'em before you play'em and your ears will love you for it!

I might suggest settling on a table, but be thinking of the cartridge and arm as a unit. By that, I mean think of which cartridges and which arms will mate well together, as opposed to, say, buying an arm and then being resticted to cartridges with which you may or may not be pleased.

As Twl, says, the Nottinghams are very fine tables, though I don't find them to sound like the Linns that I have heard over the years. The 'Nots are much livlier and "tuneful", at least to my ear. They are very easy to setup, given a massive stand or a solid wall mount. For around the budget you state, a Spacedeck can be had mated with either a Spacearm, Origin Live Silver, or perhaps spend a tad more for a Graham or Moerch.

To be fair, however, there a number of used TT's in your price range and I'm sure others will suggest their favorites. Choose the one that sounds best to YOU.

If you liked the Linn, you'll like the Nottingham or the Michell. They are both in your price range.