Would you consider finetune your question into three?
1) Best idler drive vintage TT
2) Best belt drive vintage TT
3) Best direct drive vintage TT
I would also consider vintage as TTs made before 1990, for example (that´s arbitrary, but helps keeping the space of possibilities constrained). Then people would be perhaps more focused on their listing. I would suggest not just one but several models in each category, for example
1) Garrard 401 and 301 and Thorens TD-124
2) Thorens TD-125 and TD-126 (and possibly several Linn, Micro Seiki, etc models and a host of high end British TTs)
3) Yamaha GT-2000, Revox B790 and B795 (and a lot more,like Pioneer PL-1000, Yamaha PX3, etc)