I must admit the comparison between a high class toneams is very subjective and should not be taken seriously (at least for beginner), unless a buyer compare by himself in his own system with his own records. The key point is a CARTRIDGE, it must be the same cartridge and turntable and each time it must be perfectly matched cart and tonearm.
TriPlanar, Reed, Kuzma, Schroeder, Durand ... are all high class modern tonearms, they are all must be great, the rest is personal preferences.
All these tonearm are extremely expensive!
There are absolutely amazing tonearms from the golden age of analog that cost 50-70% less compared to new high-end tonearms. Sometimes it’s hard to detect why they are cheaper than new high-end tonearms.
I remember I was in the situation like Jay many years ago, the starting point for me was Technics
EPA-100 with ZYX AIRY III MC (and Technics MM carts like 205c
mk4) and then modern Thomas
Schick 12 inch tonearm and SPU cartridges (then some vintage
MC and
MM). Schick tonearm is so beautiful that it was hard to resist, the price was more than affordable. The next step was Reed
3p "12 Cocobolo (I don’t know any other tonearm in the universe that allow me to adjust absolutely everything on the fly including azimuth). But to get Reed for affordable price (demo unit) I decided to travel to Vilnius, Lithuania to meet up with the Reed Team in person! I bought their used demo version with huge discount! Normally I would never buy a tonearm like Reed, because official retail price was something like EUR 5000!
If the budget is not a problem my advice is to buy one modern and one vintage tonearm and compare by yourself with appropriate cartridges.
This hobby is about fun after all, there are so many great tonearms and cartridges out there.