TurnTable Quest

I just bought a Teac TN-550 for $900 and so far I'm fairly pleased.

DP-62L was awesome. Denon and Pioneer made some very good TT back in those days. Hard to beat in value for money today. Look for a refurbished unit. Personally I like those heavy plinth DD designs over belt or light weight acrylic or plastic plinth designs that subsequently became popular.

For $1,000 you can get an AR turntable, XA, XB, ES-1 just to name a few, and have everything underneath upgraded with better parts, you can choose whatever wood you desire, a Jelco SA-750 tonearm with a Denon DL-110 moving coil cartridge, and you will have bought your first AND last turntable.

A very good friend of mine who lives in NJ had built me three AR turntables. My last one he built for me is the XB, and this is my go-to turntable in my system today. I also have a Dual 1219 idler with a Shure M97xe cartridge, and a Denon DP-300F with an Ortofon 2M red cartridge.With his upgrades, the Technics 1200 tonearm wand, and the DL-110 cartridge is a combo that will be hard to beat.

If you are interested in going this route, contact me for more information.

I don't know where the $1,000 budget came from (not the OP?), but for about that you can Get a Thorens 240, a Sota Moonbeam III, or a Pro-Ject RPM 3, since you like decoupled motors. I don't think you will get a worthy VPI in that range.

One to keep an eye on for an outboard motor model would be the new Oracle Origine. I heard it will retail just under $2,000 in the USA. It was supposed to come out last Summer. Of course, for $2,000 you could almost buy a VPI Scout without a cartridge.

Check out Dave's fully restored Thorens models at Vinyl Nirvana. These tables will walk all over many similarly priced new tables.

The cartridge also makes a huge difference. 

I started this hobby on the budget end, which only ends up costing more in the long run. 

IMO, the $1500 range is where one can begin to find reference quality sound. At least 1k for the table and 500 for a nice cartridge. You'll get a lot of recommendations here for VPIs, but my experience has been that they're a bit overrated.