Best turntable for easy setup and no maintenence?

The KAB modded 1200 will smoke any other deck in its price range--that's a no brainer. Why settle for glass, particle board or plastic?

About the KAB modded Stanton, I have one, but it's not for everybody. Although it has the midrange of a $1500 moving coil cartridge, it does not have the ultimate HF extension; everything done to the system that attenuates HF's will be extremely noticeable. Silver IC's should be used throughout. You would also need a phono stage capable of handling 75 KOhm loading. I had to have the resistors in my Monolithic phonostage changed. Dusty Vawter was very helpful giving me the necessary information, including circuit board diagrams. It's been worth it...

rega. set it and forget it. i can't believe somebody mentioned a teres. i used to own a teres, and it was a fine deck, but seeing as you have to finish and assemble the thing yourself, it's not condusive to simple set-up. don't get a teres unless you want to start learning about (and prompty going insane by) overhang, azimuth, vta, the different methods for setting tangency, etc. . . .

with rega, the arm intentionally has no vta to mess with. if you don't want to use a rega cart, get a dynavector 10x5 and have your dealer install it with the necessary spacers. you'll NEVER need touch it again except to play records.

Get an Technics SP10 - it might be a bit of hassle sourcing one, but if I were buying I'd get one of these

For easy set-up and easy maintenance I bought a Godring GR-1 with premounted Electra cartridge at HCM Audio(Online) for $387 and they pay shipping. Not really SOTA but if you want to play old records I find it a perfect choice.

No question REGA