SACD vs Analog

Many/most who venture into analog just for a trial run, just to see if it can really better their existing high quality digital player are actually looking for "sound" and not "experience". The first few months are enough to either put them off or convert them as believers. The hunt for great "sound" is quite common in digital domain and one who is coming from it would not want to give up great sound to experience better music many a times. Resolution is the name of the game in digital after all. So a vinyl setup which can truly beat top quality digital playback (which OP has) in all ways and actually make a digital guy an analogue convert has to be a very good one IMO. $4k is just okay to start with but nothing even close to serious in analogue domain. I have seen people who start with low budgets in analogue, actually miss the analogue bus forever because they hear less resolution than a average DVD player and add to that so much more hassles. They never know what a good analogue is all about, they dont even care to know after this.

IMO, a well restored EMT 938 from one of the EMT engineers would be a great start. It comes with its matched tonearm, cartridge and phonostage, all of them of very high quality with almost plug n play nature. Here are some links where it is available:
http://www.jpvanvliet.nl/58160.html
http://www.emt-profi.de/index-b.htm
http://www.fabtech.de/en_emt-turntables_emt938.html

Too many times I heard Redbook CD's that are better than their SACD counterparts

To match the ease of use of your EMT

IMO, a well restored EMT (938) from one of the EMT engineers would be a great start.

This is truly an excellent idea.The whole thing is as near plug & play as one can get.
Re, new TT, the above are all good choices as are the TT&arm packages from Clearaudio.
But the big EMT have the phono equalizer as well.

I would agree that all of the above TT combos will outperform the sacd.
And, to state the obvious: check that the noises inherent in analogue reproduction are acceptable to you.
As a side issue, I have very few pops in very many of my records.

A friend of mine who has the EMT 938 with EMT 929 tonearm and TSD-15 cartridge tells me that this turntable doesnt react to isolation platforms, it sounds the same no matter where you keep it and it is dead silent in the grooves unless the record is really really damaged. How cool is that ?

If you never had turntable before, the most important part is probably to have someone helping you set up the turntable properly first. I have been listening to CDs since about 1986. Had some urge to try LP but did not really know where to begin and the idea of setting up turntable just did not sound appealing and the idea of building LP library after accumulating a few thousand CDs just does not seem like a good idea. Then 5 years ago, one of my colleagues asked if I was interested since a friend of his wanted to sell his Blue Note Piccolo/Shelter 201. So I thought why not and went out and bought a cheap Clearaudio phono to go with the setup. At that time, I recently sold Esoteric D05 and got Berkeley Alpha DAC. A friend came to set up the turntable and I never looked back. I would not say that the analogue setup outperform my digital source in everything but considered the price different and in many areas where it outperformed my digital front end readily, it did not take long to see. Since then my digital front end is changed to Playback Design MPS-5 and my analogue front end is now sigificantly more expensive. I still enjoy a good SACD playing from disc or through music server but seriously for most listening sessions, I now only listen to digital source if I don't have that particular music on LP or when I am too lazy and just want to go through various songs quickly then I use my music server.
Even original DSD recorded SACD does not sound as good as LP that was made from those DSD master, I think. I have a whole bunch of Stockfisch SACD/LP, Jarvi Beethoven symphonies cycle, Tilson Thomas Mahler cycle on both SACD and LP and there is no contest, I think.