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

@pindac;
A very heavy platter, like my solid brass platter from SMD will eliminate virtually all of the bass emphasis but sacrifice a good bit of the propulsive quality that many of us love about our idlers. With my current cartridge, a VdH Colibri Crimson, I like the trade-off but I am sure as hell not getting rid of my OEM platter. My current 301 set-up renders tons of detail and clarity at the expense of tone and midrange warmth. As I said above, no one turntable-despite what one noted analog expert would have us believe-provides everything. The same holds true for every individual component known to mankind, every phone cartridge, every system, and every room. 

Can you pls elaborate on the One continuous wire from cartridge clip to RCAs..  I use RCA cable from back of the TT to PPA990.

Yeah that's what you want to avoid, the interconnect between the table and the phono stage. What you want is an arm with integral RCA. In other words the cable and RCA is hard wired into the arm. One continuous wire. 

This is because the signal coming off the cartridge is the weakest faintest most delicate in all of audio. The next stage in the process, the phono stage amplifies this weak signal by the most amplification in all of audio. The last thing you want to do in a situation like this is subject that signal to a whole bunch of unnecessary connections. Every one of which is prone to micro-arcing and all the many other imperfections inherent in every connection.

As far as setup goes, do it yourself. Its not nearly as hard as its made out to be. Its not nearly as expensive. You can download and print alignment grids right off the web, and then with a $20 Shure stylus force gauge and some tweezers you are set. 

The reason this is all you need is because all the fancy jigs and meters and whatnot, all they really ever do is get you close. Once you get close all the fine tuning is done by ear. When you are tweaking VTF .05g by ear and the cartridge spec is a range twenty times as big you begin to understand why it just doesn't matter what gauge you use. When you are tweaking VTA by equally tiny amounts and doing it all by ear you begin to understand what a waste an expensive protractor is. And when you do all this stuff and see and hear and it all sinks in then you actually know what's going on and realize that right there was worth ten times the effort- and you will not hesitate to do it again, and again, and it only gets easier and easier. So just do it.

Chakster wrote that Oswald Mills Audio plinth is made of graphite. That is incorrect. They are made of Pennsylvania slate. Slate and graphite are two different things.
Also, perhaps paradoxically, use of a heavier counterweight could have the effect of reducing the effective mass of the tonearm overall. This is because the effect of the counter weight on tonearm effective mass is proportional to its distance from the pivot-squared, times the weight of the CW. Thus the distance from the pivot is dominant. And substituting a heavy CW for a light one will bring the CW closer to the pivot, all other things being equal.

I agree in principle with what Miller carbon says about having a direct connection from the cartridge all the way to the input of the phono stage, but that is only an ideal goal and certainly not a necessity. I do insist upon it with very low output moving coil cartridges, but I cannot hear a difference with higher output moving magnet cartridges, for example.

@millercarbon   Funny, your first post here represents my tonearm.  It's a 1989 SME IV with Cardas rewire continuous from the cartridge clips to an outboard junction box (epoxied wiring at the bottom of the SME so it can't be pulled out and the box mounted to the back of the table).  I especially like the arm's less sensitivity to vertical tracking angle.  I can play 120 to 180 gram records and not have the problem many other high end arms have where the listener has to adjust the VTA up or down based on the record thickness.  The negative is that it's a pain to get the VTA correct using the armspring method and lock.  If I had to do it again, I would buy the SME V.  The arm has about 10,000 hours on it and is in perfect condition.   The 1989 SMEs came with crappy wiring and a DIN connection.  Rewire it with RCA termination and it's a bargain high end arm.

Miller would have a baby with my tonearms setup on my 401.
Micro Seiki ma505ls.
Detachable headshell.
Din plug cable.
Out to Denon sut.
Out to Phonostage
Finally into integrated.

Lol.

But not quite sure why Miller even posting here as he is a confirmed idler drive hater?
Rumble, rumble like a cement mixer .
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