Turntable selection advise

Thanks to all for all the help, my budget currently is not the best so I will keep my options open until I can hit the road running again.

I would second the Rega recommendation. I believe you can get the P1 for under $400. This would be a much better option than any of the cheap motor-driven Technics, etc. Belt-drive is the way to go.

Getting into playing records requires expense beyond the table, cartridge and phono preamplifier. One also needs record cleaning supplies, a stand or shelf, isolation, interconnects, set-up tools...and records.

It's not a small investment...even on a budget.

My advice would be to shelve the idea until your finances situation improves.

you might want to check out audioasylum. They have a lot more vintage table strings than you will find here. There is a lot of folks on that forum that get a lot of enjoyment from the older and cheaper tables and a lot of fans for the moderate priced vintage MM cartridges. I suspect you will get a much different range of responses. I like the high end tables and get a lot of enjoyment our of my investment so I am not talking down the higher quality tables but I also know a lot of folks who get similar enjoyment out of a lot less investment. As specifically to your question, the technics tables are typically better built than the AT table you mentioned IMO I would also consider a vintage denon, pioneer, yamaha, etc.

Unless you already have a substantial vinyl collection, it may be a bad idea to start from scratch.

Ever see the movie, "The Money Pit"?

There's a real life analog version and you can find many testimonials in the threads.

Good luck.