Your choice - TT, Arm, Stage, Cartridge - $5000 budget

Whacky

To be honest most people are just going to suggest what they have or heard. Problem is that many people never get to compare tables side by side in the same system. Also even if they do some carts work better with different arms, phono stages, amps and speakers. At the end of the day its very subjective and personnel at this price point you are talking about.

A lot of these "Huge " differences are not really huge but subtle and have to do with personnel taste and system matching. Sadly you are not going to get a lot of real head to head comparisons. Trust me I have looked and done tons of research. This hobby always leaves you wondering about if Product x is better than what you bought. The lack of dealers and true head to head reviews kinda puts us all in the situation. Just go with something sold and keep your ears open. A table in this price point should and most likely will sound amazing.

Yup. Choosing table is hard.

Yeah I am gonna make a bid at the VPI Prime for the time being. Definitely seems like a reasonable option. And its available.

I like some of the other tables. Gyrodec, Nottingham, etc. But if I can get the Prime for $2200-2500, that definitely gives me some wiggle room with getting a great phono stage. 

Honestly you can't go wrong with that table at that price. 100% what I did. Does it mean that there are no other tables that are amazing or even better.... no 

But its a very solid construction, up-gradable, sounds very balanced and smooth, very good soundstage. To boot a lot of people use VPI so a lot of advice and opinions available through these forums and the VPI forum. These tables and parts don't get the import taxes add. There will always be a market for VPI. 30 year old VPI tables still sell on here. 

If you end up getting it please give us your impressions good or bad. 

Hopefully the offer for the VPI goes through. Either way, I'll definitely post my experience no matter what direction I ultimately go.  

My current setup is a Project Debut Carbon with the acrylic platter and a AT 440mlb cart. Ended up being a pretty noisy setup after my upgrade to the Primaluna and Tekton Double Impacts. Didnt really matter whether or not I was running it through my Marrantz AV7702 phono input, or my Mytek Brooklyn DAC phono stage. 

I recently upgraded my DAC to a PS Directstream so I lost the phono stage of the Brooklyn. Which prompted the entire analog upgrade decision.

If the TT offer goes through, the focus will then be on a good, quiet, and revealing phono stage.