Turntable - The Next Step

I'll second the Music Hall MMF-7.3. It's a fantastic turntable for the money. To me, the Ortofon 2m Bronze it comes with is one of the best cartridges I've heard at that price point. It does everything right in my book. I have the MMF-7.3 In walnut veneer, which I like better than the black. It is a very well thought out design. I pair it with a tubed phono preamp, the Tavish the Classic with NOS tubes (RCA 7025, GE 12au7, and Sylvania 5751). 

Go one step further with a moving coil and add a SUT. I’m using a Jensen mc2rr-L with a Hana EL into the moving magnet input of my phono preamp in another set up. Sounds fantastic.

Another option for an upgrade to turntable would be to look into an Avid turntable. They are big on the concept of the turntable matters more to the sound than the cartridge used. If you look at a lot of turntables that are of significant cost, you will notice that they provide with the turntable a relatively low cost, but high quality cartridge. For instance, on the Avid Ingenium plug and play, they provide a premounted unbranded moving magnet cartridge, actually a Rega Carbon with no markings. Also look at what comes installed on the high buck Vertere DG-1....its a rebadged Audio-Technica AT-VM520EB, I think 100 bucks. Some will say we'll that's because they don't want to provide a very expensive cartridge with the turntable package, as they assume the end user will just replace it.....I say bull crap....they provide the lower tier cartridge because they listened to the end result and found it to do all things necessary to provide great sound. In other words, don't waste your money buying some high dollar cartridge. 

I own the above mentioned Avid Ingenium plug and play and I can attest that it has an outstanding build quality for the money spent.