Honest question about cartridge vs. turntable performance.

cakyol
Wow, thanks for verify that that I always suspected. And is my view of it too.
 
That if we ONLY look att the whole TT (=100%) and disregard all other following components downstream.

It is hard to put numbers on things but for illustration and easier understanding.

That cartridge make up for ≈70-80% of the sound quality and ≈20-30% of the sound quality that is left is shared between platter (drive type, plinth, bearing and so on) and tone arm (length, cable, bearing type and so on).

Then we can discuss this and that and adjust 10% up or down. But it is important to make this rather simple to understand.

When all this discussion back and forth and details on drive system or tone arms will just confuse many when we do not know and understand that those types of "rabbit holes discussions" is only, lively discussions on a few % of the sound quality.

Good to have that perspective back of your head when reading this type of threads.

@cakyol 
I total disagree. I could be content with a lessor cartridge, but never an inferior table. Especially if a decent arm was used. If you can’t hear the difference than your Lp12 isn’t set up properly. As most Linns probably aren’t with their wobbly suspension.

Hang on sdrsdrsdr, Accuphase was very much alive back then and they made some awesome equipment. If I know the Japanese we were also not getting their best stuff. They hoard it for themselves. Woodworking sharpening stones are a great example. We get the garbage here. In order to get good ones you have to do business with a store there. 
Most peoples experience when it comes to Hi Fi is anecdotal. They here some things in their own system and think it's gospel. An anecdote does not a study make. There are too many variables to be able to say much about anything except one individual prefers this over that. Multiple observers have to note the same characteristic over broad circumstances, multiple units etc. 
Your Linn sounds better because it has a very small low torque motor far away from the cartridge and it is isolated from the environment by a suspension consequently far less noise gets to the stylus than any currently made DD turntable. It would be interesting to put a Monaco turntable on a MinusK stand to see what you get. But, the Japs never took isolation seriously. (that should raise some eyebrows) The Linn's problems are that it's suspension is not designed well and is poorly damped, the universal arm board is poor, as you mention tonearms are limited and lastly it has developed the silliest cult following. But, it certainly does sound better than any direct drive and we compared it to at least 10 if not more. There were weeks when we sold at least 10 LInns and we had 3 or 4 DD tables set up to compare it to.  The DD turntables were selling the Linns for us. You just had to make sure the customer had a really stable location for the Linn or you could have an angry customer.
Vintage DD turntables are definitely not the way to go. There may be some new ones that are fine I do not know. There certainly is no Technics turntable that I personally would bother with. For the most part they just dusted off the old designs when vinyl came back and made up a bunch of new marketing to make people think they were buying a cheap turntable that was better than any of those high price belt drive things. 

Vintage DD turntables are definitely not the way to go. There may be some new ones that are fine I do not know. There certainly is no Technics turntable that I personally would bother with. For the most part they just dusted off the old designs when vinyl came back and made up a bunch of new marketing to make people think they were buying a cheap turntable that was better than any of those high price belt drive things.

@mijostin you know nothing about reference Direct Drive turntables so how can you tell someone anything about them? Would you like to recall top of the line DD turntable you ever owner in your life? Then we can talk about it.

Technics new design is NEW, not old.

It’ new Coreless Direct Drive motor. This company knows very well what they are doing, it’s not a funny little hi-fi manufacturer in his garage like most of those small Belt Drive companies with huge margin in the price for their toys.

And finally who cares about your own choice? We know you like Belt Drives. But everything you’re posting about DD turntables is wrong. You’d better study a bit about proper Direct Drive design - this is the missing link. Technics products are not overpriced just because they are able to make millions of them and sell them all quickly. The best selling turntable in the world is an old SL1200mkII series, probably you don’t know about it. Today they can make reference SP-10R and keep the price low, so some audiophile for whom the price is the key don’t really understand what they are missing, they can pay 5 times more and not even get close to SP-10R.

I know there must be some good belt drive turntables, but there are much more problems with belt drive than with direct drive motor.