Need help with choosing a transport.

California Audio Labs Delta, maybe? May seem like a dated and not very exciting choice, but a lot of people have them and keep them, or sell them and later regret doing so when they realize what they 'upgraded' to didn't really increase their enjoyment all that much. $300-400 used, typically. With your budget, you could add a Monarchy DIP to reduce/eliminate any residual jitter (~$150). I've had my Delta for going on 13 years (!), BTW. Had to have the laser assembly replaced in '04 (cost ~$175) and no reliability issues since. Sound -wise, it has always sounded 'just right' to me running straight into a CAL Alpha DAC via the balanced 110ohm connection.

Or, maybe one of the Pioneer Elite CD players with the Stable Platter transport? I know you don't want to use a CD player as a transport, but that might be worth making an exception because of the quality of the transport alone in those units.

One more idea - an Audio Research CDT1 - a very nice transport, though your $700 budget might not *quite* get you there unless you get a little lucky and find a real deal.

Good luck!

Thanks for the input, Steve. Wow, the CAL Delta is OLD! The price is attractive but do you really think it will hold up against the latest transports? Don't know anything about the Audio Research CDT1 and haven't been able to find much comment about it. The TADAC is a jitter-free design and mates well with anything.
CEC TL2 gets consistently great reviews. What about Theta Pearl or Madrigal Proceed?

Pmboyd, the Proceed PDT series of transports is quite good, with the PDT3 being among the best ever made (IMHO). They were also built like battle tanks. However, if you should find one and ever need service it will cost you huge dollars to send it to Harman (~ $1000). Also, the Philips CDM1 Mk.II transport used in that series in unobtanium now, so there's a real risk you'll end up with a doorstop if something should go wrong with the mechanism.

If you can stretch it the CEC TL51X is a very nice transport. They show up used between $800 - $1000.

Besides sound quality, your main concern when buying a transport should be parts availability in the future, specially the laser unit, which has a finite life.

So, buying a decent CD player from a well respected manufacturer with a good service track record is not a bad idea.
Rega pushes the customer service burden to their distributors and expects them to stock parts. Will your local distributor have a discontinued laser assembly in stock 5 years from now ?
Sony and Phillips do not stock parts for discontinued products. Same with LG, Samsung and most mass-market manufacturers.

Your best bet is a high-end, solid, USA or UK based manufacturer.
Audio Research has probably the best customer service in the whole high-end industry. The have parts in stock for every product they have ever made.
I believe that Naim is also an excellent company to deal with.
Maybe others can chime in about CEC's service policy.
I hope this helps