Help Picking a turntable

It seems like the Gem Dandy Polytable would be a good fit in the $1500-2000 range, especially with the Jelco 750D tonearm featuring fluid damping and detachable headshell. Fluid damping elevates the tracking ability and interchangeable headshells makes swapping between different cartridges (e.g., MM, MC, and mono) quick and easy. Good review from Absolute Sound. It's called the Polytable because designer George E. Merrill (i.e., GEM) uses several patented polymer formulas in the turntable materials. Looks really promising. 

The link to GEM Polytable Web page is http://www.hifigem.com/polytable.html.

The Absolute Sound reviews the GEM Dandy Polytable with a Shelter 201 MM cartridge. This cartridge might prove to be a good  match for the Polytable. The 201 is $310 from authorized US dealers, but I just got mine from a Japanese storefront on eBay for $167. It is easiy worth it at that price. It's also inexpensive to own as the replacement stylus (from authorized dealers) is only $100. I really need to let mine break in more, but I like what I hear so far with a full-bodied sound, real-sounding midrange, good imaging, excellent dynamics, and a surprising level of detail when it comes to ambience and decaying room reverberation.

gasherbaum (the OP) wrote:

...I didn’t realize that different cartridges have different gain levels and some cartridges won’t work well with some phono stages. Yikes, I am a definite novice :)!!! In addition to the Boulder phono stage at $13,000, Rod at Soundings thinks a ARC PH9 would fit nicely and costs $7,500....

It can be overwhelming when getting iinto vinyl playback for the first time (or first time in a long time). So many ’tables, tonearms, cartridges, and phono stages. So many interdependencies complicating the quest for an ideal system match.

But you’ll make your situation much more difficult if you try to achieve a really high end playback rig on your first try. Most people who get to a $10-20K turntable, $1500-7500 cartridge, and $3500-10k phono stage didn’t do it on their first purchase; it came as the result of years (probably decades) of purchases, living with the rig for awhile, and then incrementally upgrading.

You’ll be much happier purchasing an affordable overachieving rig that gives you much if not most of the satisfaction you seek using components that are affordable and easy to live with.

That’s why I recommended the GEM Dandy Polytable and Shelter 201. Both are highly affordable overachievers. I’m particularly enamored with the Shelter 201 now that I’ve had a week to play with mine. It has no noticeable flaws, no peaky highs or murky mids or flubby bass. It has a surprising amount of dynamic range; it never feels polite or compressed. Best of all, and this makes finding a phono stage easier, it has a claimed 4 mV output but I think it may be higher. I had been using a high output moving coil cart (2.2 mV) and I had to turn the gain way down to match the output to the cartridge’s input. This in turn lowered the noise floor significantly, which may account for such a large dynamic range. A lower noise floor is always a good thing.

So far I have played *a lot* of records on this cart in a week, covering bombastic orchestral spectaculars, solo piano, direct-to-disk big band, chamber music, small combo jazz, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Diana Krall, Dire Straits, Boz Scaggs doing Great American Songbook standards, nylon string guitar-driven Latin jazz, acoustic bluegrass, ’60s instrumental pop with subtle background vocals, Miles Davis, etc., etc. The cart always sounds like it was designed for whatever music it’s playing at the moment.

A high output cartridge will simplify selection of your first phono stage. you can get a really good phono stage for high output cartridges for a lot less than one of the same quality level made to handle 0.2mV cartridge output.