To venture back into vinyl or not,...that is the question.

But what about Lucifer?

So just to enlighten you, and bore some to tears most likely.

When I first decided to " get back into vinyl" I did exactly the same, budget of $500 for table, cart and Phonostage.
Cheapest Project table and a Bellari Phonostage.
So what did it sound like?
Garbage.....
To be fair looking back it had to compete with a 3k Esoteric cd player so I shouldn’t have been surprised.
Sold the lot and said fugg it... For a while.
Joined this site 2012 or do, read a LOT.
Revised the budget to $1500 and better but still no " magic".
To cut the story to the chase.
9 years later I have a magical system through constant upgrades and research.
Cost...... North of 10k on vinyl, well North....lol.

Sure a cheap rig will play and do so at varying levels of acceptable.
But be warned, it’s a deep, dark rabbit hole once you start from which even Alice could not escape!

Depends what you are expecting?
On a budget of $500 or less I do not think you would end up being very impressed compared to say a $500 CD player.