Dear Hal, I think these last few guys have put you on a sensible track. Since your last reference point for what vinyl sounds like is your LP12, it makes most sense to spend a few hundred bucks just to bring your LP12 back to life, with no upgrades at first. This probably would include a new belt and cleaning and re-lubricating the bearing, at a minimum. Find an experienced Linn tech to do these things. Combined with the Ittok tonearm and your Goldring cartridge, you may like what you hear, but keep in mind that the choice of tonearm and cartridge have a huge, probably the major, effect on what you'll hear. Spend a month or two or three listening to that rig, and then you will have a better idea where to go from there. I am not personally familiar with the Jolida phono stage, but that too may be a limiting factor. It may be that spending $3K to $4K, as you propose, on just a new turntable or on Linn upgrades makes no sense if you change nothing else in the reproduction chain. But you should be the judge of that, not any of us.
