What is the best tonearm at about 3000 budget?

The SME sounds like wet cloth, the Graham sounds cold, and VPI sounds like mashed potatoe, compared to Breuer.

The AirTangent arm is one of the best ever made. They can be found sometimes in the $3000 range used. Cartridge compatibility is a major issue with any tonearm, and I would recommend choosing a combination of arm/cart as a system instead of a great arm and great cart separately, and hoping they will work great together. Also, there are some lower price arms that will compete well with the big buck items. For a gimballed arm, the Origin Live Silver 250 or Silver Taper are great contenders for top honors at lower prices. For a unipivot, the RS Labs RS-1 has gotten great praise. These arms offer the performance of the best for a lower price and represent great value. Unless you are going for status, you would be well advised to audition these arms as well as the expensive ones.

As good as most arms in the $3000 or less category, according to all who've heard it, and far less expensive. Why not invest the $2000+ in other equipment?

Andrew

I prefer the new Vector from Basis Audio. It is a serious high performance tonearm that is as good if not better than either of the 2 AirTangent tonearms I've owned.

Origin Live Silver 250. The British HiFi press called it "possibly the best tonearm in the world right now". The TNT Audio review said it was hard to categorize, since it has absolutely no coloration or flaws, and thus categorized it a the ideal "reference" tool, to assess the performance of other high-end tonearms. I have had one myself for several months now, and it blows away any tonearm I have ever owned, or heard. My assessment is that it has the best blend of all the best qualities of the top flight tonearms with little or no shortcomings that plague the others. It is easily competitive with the $3000-$4000 offerings, and it only costs $725. Hard to believe? You bet. And so is the sound. If you could imagine the bass authority of the SME V, with none of the overly-analytical nature, the midrange and high end liquidity of the Graham 2.2, and virtually no colorations, with the ease of set-up of a Rega, and the ability to handle extremely low-compliance low-output MC cartridges, this is the Silver 250. Even if one of these other great arms was a very thin hair better than the Silver 250, would it be worth 4 times the price? My money is on the Silver 250.