Best Tonearm and Cartridge for 4K or under for restored Garrard 301

Kanchi;
First, to respond to your response to Chakster, I have a 12" Cocobolo Reed 3P on my Thorens TD124. It is not a high mass arm. Reed markets the different woods as having different masses and there is both an element of truth and an element of misleading marketing there. All of the Reed 3P's regardless of choice of wood are medium mass afaik. Every cartridge I have mounted on my 12" Cocobolo has absolutely sang-including my two Benz Glider LO's which frankly never sounded good on three different VPI arms I used to own. I am currently using an Ortofon Cadenza Bronze on that arm and it sounds great. 
Now as to plinths. Of course Oswald Mills is going to tell you that there granite plinth is best. I believe they will also sell you a cast iron plinth that got press in S'Phile not long ago-though that may only be for the SP10. You read that constrained layer damping is not a good idea for Garrard? Well, how do I respond to that? No offense but you can read all kinds of things on any subject-but they are often not true. Plus, there is no right or wrong. It is a matter of taste. Do you want your Garrard 301 to sound fast, clean, and sterile (admittedly this is somewhat of an exaggeration but I need to express characteristics associated with such high mass inert plinth materials mated to the 301) or do you want it to do the best possible job conveying tone and texture? 
I will give you an analogy; take a look at Jason Victor Serinus's system and his reviews in Stereophile and compare it to Art Dudley's. Or go listen to a system with Magico's powered by CH Precision electronics and compare it to an all-Audio Note UK system. There is no "perfect", there is no "correct" and there is no "does everything the best". You have to choose what you want and what you are willing to give up. Just as with loudspeakers to use yet another analogy. You can't have it all. 

I second @fsonicsmith comment about refurbishment. A full strip down and rebuild is the way to go. check out Matt Taylor of AudioGrail.

On the slate vs wood... while I have 401s not 301s, my experience may be helpful. I found the slate to have a little more glare than the wood plinth. That is, until I put the slate on 3" maple. The slate plinth is amazing at extracting detail and dynamics. The wood plinth a little less so. And because it’s wood, there is a somewhat woody tone compared to the slate. Go with the slate if you want to extract as much info as possible. Ask Jim what he thinks. Note that my slate version has considerable mods as outlined above. Nevertheless, I've been on this ride for a few years now, starting with an old dirty 401 for $700 to  what I have today.  

@noromance I love your setup. Superb! I cannot find the Idler on audiosilente website. Is it pulley? pardon my ignorance. Pls elaborate on SPH and platter. My platter has no markings.
Would you have given it to Jim for cleaning? (I know you used audiograil) They are a bit expensive and shipping.
What are the things below the spikes on the slate plinth. Where did you get the spikes. I like the look.

Thanks to you and everyone who has posted in this thread. Its really fun!

Just curious Kanchi-did you look at my system on my profile page and particularly my Garrard 301? If you prefer noromance’s, my feelings will not be hurt but....
The idler wheel is rubber on steel. http://www.audiosilente.com/garrard-401-idler-wheel-garrard-401.html
"They are a bit expensive and shipping"? Perhaps you mean with shipping. This is no time to be looking to save on things. If you want it done right, you have to pay for shipping. I bought a lot of things from the UK, Ray Clark’s PSU for the Garrard, my plinth from Russ, shipping is not that terribly expensive.
Hell, I got in the car twice and drove six hours each way to pick up my decks from Greg in Nashville. Worth every minute of my time.

The "beauty" of a medium mass tonearm is that you can easily add mass, if you decide to go with a very low compliance MC cartridge.  Whereas, medium mass tonearms, as is, mate well with most medium and medium high compliance cartridges.  On the other hand, you cannot easily reduce tonearm effective mass, if you should want to try a very high compliance MM or MI cartridge from days of yore on a very high mass tonearm.  So, I would stick with medium effective mass and think about Triplanar and Reed, primarily, if I were you.  I've never heard the Kuzma, so cannot exlude or include that one. fsonicsmith says his Cocobolo-armed Reed is "medium" mass at 18-19g.  I'd want to stay in the 11 to 16g range for max flexibility.  I use a Reed 2A with a Red Cedar arm wand.  Red cedar is a little less dense than cocobolo.  But rules like this can be gently broken, because if you look at the equation for resonant frequency, you can see that there is quite a bit of flexibility in values for effective mass and/or cartridge compliance allowed, while still staying in the desired resonant frequency range of 8-12Hx. 

As to slate as a plinth material, it's been excellent for me.  I own two turntables with solid slate plinths: Lenco L75 and Denon DP80.  They're both quite neutral sounding.  Slate is in and of itself "constrained layer damped", because that is the nature of slate per se; viewed from the side there are overlapping irregular layers of material, which is what makes it very difficult to cut with a water jet. (I know this first hand.)  On my Technics SP10 Mk3, I used a more massive piece of slate coupled to a cherrywood base, mounted to the slate from below.  I listened to the Mk3 before vs after I attached the wood base, and I heard maybe a 5% uptick in solidity and neutrality with the wood.