To venture back into vinyl or not,...that is the question.

@tomic601 

IIRC, those are the 500 series Kenwood. With a Grado wooden cart, that would be a steal. Even with shipping.

After just going down this same path, but not having a Linn as my old table, my personal feeling is to find something satisfying at $500 is going to be tough. A used rig as Tomic suggested might be the best way to go vs new.

$500 won't even buy you a decent digital, let alone a turntable that would be worthy of playback through your CJ's ART preamp. Now you want something that serves as a 'background' music, sure $500 is a good chunk of change :-)

Thanks for humoring us!

$500?
Waste of money. For that amount it's just a conversation piece in your room.

Don't forget you need a proper phonostage to make "the magic"

To exceed even moderately good modern digital with analogue is an expensive proposition.  It’s a big investment to buy a tt, phonopreamp, cables, cartridge, and records. Unless you already own a large record collection sitting in storage, don’t do it. 

I agree with EBM. No matter what ..... records will always be best to me!