TurnTable Quest

For $1,000 you can get an AR turntable, XA, XB, ES-1 just to name a few, and have everything underneath upgraded with better parts, you can choose whatever wood you desire, a Jelco SA-750 tonearm with a Denon DL-110 moving coil cartridge, and you will have bought your first AND last turntable.

A very good friend of mine who lives in NJ had built me three AR turntables. My last one he built for me is the XB, and this is my go-to turntable in my system today. I also have a Dual 1219 idler with a Shure M97xe cartridge, and a Denon DP-300F with an Ortofon 2M red cartridge.With his upgrades, the Technics 1200 tonearm wand, and the DL-110 cartridge is a combo that will be hard to beat.

If you are interested in going this route, contact me for more information.

Helomech wrote

" Check out Dave's fully restored Thorens models at Vinyl Nirvana. These tables will walk all over many similarly priced new tables.

IMO, the $1500 range is where one can begin to find reference quality sound. At least 1k for the table and 500 for a nice cartridge. You'll get a lot of recommendations here for VPIs, but my experience has been that they're a bit overrated."

My friend who built my AR turntable is very good friends with Dave @ Vinyl Nirvana. In fact he does work for Dave. He is well known and respected for his work on AR turntables. His turntables are so well built that you would be hard pressed to find a turntable that cost more that  would outperform his turntables.