Going down the rabbit hole

[Grady59]

I currently have a U-Turn Audio basic Orbit turntable. It was pretty cheap, and looks and feels cheap.
I am considering upgrading.
I have the Magnaplanar MMG speakers, and a Marantz NR1200 receiver.
The turntables I have under consideration are:
MoFi Studiodeck $1349 with the Studio Tracker MM cart
Sota MoonBeam IV $1250 with no cart or add on the Ortofon Red cart for $100
EAT Prelude $1195 with Ortofon Red cart
These are within my budget.
I would appreciate any input you have.
Thanks

 

[zoombrewer77]

All seem, on paper, to be worthy upgrades if you’re ready. I like EAT’s tables, from a pure aesthetic viewpoint. I’ll be honest here...if I’m in the $1,000 - $1500 bracket, I’d be on Audiogon, Barter Town, and USAudiomart daily, looking for a used SOTA, VPI, or Well Tempered. Just a thought.

 

[olddude55]

Why not put a better cartridge on the U-Turn?
A word of warning--back in 2003 I bought a $750 deck that, when it arrived, looked and felt cheap. It was a POS, not worth $50, let alone $750. The seller was no help at all (it was a brand new deck).
You might get more bang for your buck sticking with the deck you have and upgrading the cartridge. And the phono stage.

 

[SB12345]

I'd go for the SOTA @ $1250, then throw an AT3600L (about $20 and better than that Ortofon Red by far) on it until you get it settled in and decide what you really like and want.

 

[captouch]

If you're committed to vinyl, investing in a better table is an eventuality, so if you want to buy now, that's fine. Your budget allows for something that won't need to be upgraded yet again any time soon.

But I agree with the others that the Ortofon Red isn't really the way to go for a cart. You're going to get a significantly better table, but you're going to bottleneck it with their BOTL cartridge.

If you believe that even at the $1000-1250 level you may get so into vinyl that you'll want to upgrade yet again after that, then I'd be inclined to buy a better cart for the U-Turn and save more $. But if you think you'll be good with a $1000-1250 table for the foreseeable future, then yeah, I'd be on the look out for a gently used TT that'll save you some $ over new and use a cart that's not going to seriously bottleneck your new-to-you table.

To start out with, if you want to put as much $ as possible toward the table, you can always be on the lookout for a vintage cartridge that's good bang for the buck used and for the 500-1000hrs it takes you to wear out the stylus on that cart, save more $ to allow you to step up to a higher end new cart at the right time - you may get another noticeable upgrade from that step.

There are a lot of well regarded vintage cartridges (Shure V15 series, I like the Stanton 681EEE as well) that don't sell for a lot and that can be resold for what you bought it for later since they're "fully depreciated" as older carts.

 

[wushuliu]

I would agree that if sound quality is the main desire to upgrade, then upgrading the cart first is the wiser move for newbies. This way you learn just how important the cartridge is. Then if you decide to upgrade the table you've still got a decent cart for the better table.

Modern turntables are marketed to make you think if you have to upgrade you have to upgrade everything, and reviewers reinforce that by ignoring the impact a cart makes vs. the table itself.