Looking at Turntable: belt drive or direct drive?

My recommendation would be a new Rega package with matching Rega phono stage. Its a great starter, easy to set up and musical. P3 plus MM phono & cartridge.

I think the Pioneer DD would be the best choice for a first table. Just get your feet wet with analog and see if you want to continue playing records. Some people get too neurotic with record cleaning and turntable setup and constantly worry about whether the record is clean enough, surface noise, VTA, et al, and they decide to stick with cd’s.  Just buy something decent and then upgrade it a year or 2 later if you feel the need. 

venturing into vinyl.

the most expensive TT and Cartridge will NOT sound good unless the TT/Arm/Cartridge is professionally aligned. It takes time to acquire the skills, and a few inexpensive tools are needed.

to dip your toes, with

no serious investment or initial need for knowledge, alignment tools and skills,

I would buy a simple TT with a switchable built-in phono eq, to ascertain if you will stick with vinyl.

removable headshell is important when beginning.

I had and recommend this one:, quartz locked direct drive, factory aligned arm and cartridge, optional built-in phono (use it to start, use external later)

I actually preferred the sound of it’s built-in phono eq to my McIntosh C28 SS Preamp’s phono eq. When you decide to stick with vinyl, 1st thing to do is a more advanced MM cartridge.

this microline stylus profile comes pre-mounted in a headshell, all you would do is loosen the headshell locking ring and swap the headshell, re-check tracking force and anti-skate force.

any future ’better’ TT, stick with a removable headshell, then that cartridge can be used on it, as well as others you may progress to, i.e. Moving Coil; Mono; ....

then there is the argument that detachable headshell arms in the budget category incur significant performance compromises in comparison to some of their fixed headshell brethren

you have to weigh up the the pros and cons..

some of the most highly respected arms have removable headshells.

i.e. SME's 3009, 3012

technics 250

Acos lustre GST-1; GST-801

significant performance compromises is an absurd overstatement IMO, especially for a beginner

some headshells can provide adjustable VTA, far more important than imagined improvement of fixed arm

for a beginner, KISS.