"House sound" of VPI, Clearaudio, Rega, MH, etc.

Buying a used table/arm and a new cartridge with your budget you can certainly do way better than a P3/24, and the diminishing returns syndrome is overrated IMHO as long as the rest of your system is up to the task. You should be looking at table/arms with list prices of about $3-4k and cartridges in the $1k range. You can do even better, although a bit risky, by buying the cartridge used as well. There is a lot of very good competition at that price, with varied appeal sound wise, ergonomically and aesthetically. I would make a short list of what appeals to you at that price and don['t worry about whether a P3, or for that matter, a Technics 1200, will do just as well. It won't.

"What Hi Fi? Sound and Vision" magazine out of UK offers a monthly feature where they rank 1,400 products by one to five stars. They cover turntables and will give you good insights into your house sound by brand and model. They awarded Clearaudio and Rega their products of the year for 2008. England presently leads the vinyl revival as we know it and you will find nice information around a wide variety of English and German manufacturers.

www.stereomojo.com just did a nice review of the Music Hall 9.1; and the new Rega 3 has been getting universely great press: the Rega 3-24 is a wonderful entry point to get your feet wet. It will deliver years of trouble-free wear. You certainly can play in $1k range and get great performance per dollar. Gene Rubin Audio is an excellent retailer around all things English.

Dynavector and Denon make great entry level cartridges. I especially like the modified Denon 103 by Zu Audio--handles a wide variety of genres well.

Addendum to my last post.

When manufacturers develop their line, higher priced models have to be demonstrably better to justify their positions otherwise not only will customers not buy them, but dealers won't sell them.

Continuing my quest. I found a dealer for VPI while traveling - unfortunately he was out of stock. He did have a Linn LP12 and a Rega P3 setup side by side, so I gave a listen to those.

Now, I've heard the Rega elsewhere - and with the PSU - was quite impressed at the price point.

He had the tables running through a Linn preamp, and a Mark Levinson amp driving B&W 801s in a fairly sizable room. They weren't out far enough, but it should have been okay. This is a dealer who claims to be expert in TT/cartridge setup. Unfortunately, I didn't have my records. Here's what I heard:
Very smooth, very quiet, very dark and no air or spatial presentation. The Linn was very marginally better than the Rega. Certainly not 5x the price better. I think the dealer was almost hurt by my reaction. Perhaps I have too much wax in my ears. But, the other presentations of the Rega were much better. He asked me to come back w/ my music. Both tables had comparable MM cartridges - a Linn and Rega Elys at the same price points.
So, what was wrong?

Could be the dealer likes it that way and works the set up to that end. Could be you like things bright. Could be the recordings.