Top turntables?

Walker if you have the money or used Maplenoll Signature Ariadne if on a budget.

I now own the big Kuzma XL with Airline, but if I had to recommend something for cost effectiveness, the Kuzma Reference with a Triplanar. I had this combo before I upgraded and WOW. The nice thing about the Reference (which is a smaller table than the XL) is that its isolation system is very effective and it is still light enough, unlike the XL, to be mounted on a wall shelf. Is it the 'best'? Who cares? The XL/Airline is 'better,' but at much greater cost and far more trouble to isolate, deal with airpump, etc.

Rockport? Continuum? Pluto? Forsell?

There are some excellent turntables out there? One of the things that I have learned is that the difference between the great ones and the not so grate ones is how much of the complete package they are. I remember the Simon Yorke. A truly great table provided you add the Walker Motor Drive and the Vibraplane. One for speed the other for isolation. If any is not working the whole thing collapses. In that point the Kuzma thread above is 100% on target and easily predictable. I believe someo of the mega $ turntables benefit from extensive isolations systems that are built into racks / platters etc to add the extra level of refinement. In that regard, I would suggest that many great turntables can be upgraded quite significantly with a speed controller / wall shelf / isolation stand to come close to many other turntables if the fundamentals are right.

The Simon Yorke turntable is so over rated it isn't funny. I had one.