How often do you upgrade turntable ?

noromance, I agree - big steps.

awise1961, I really like the Spacedeck, mine has Space arm and Goldring 1042 cartridge. I was thinking about upgrading both the arm and the cartridge but decided to postpone it. It sounds good as it is.

I jumped directly from a ~$1,000 hobbyist belt drive transcription turntable to a Technics SP-10R because I'm in the practice of selling records I've bought and transferred and didn't want to have regrets about the transfers possibly having been better. It took some saving and a lot of sales of good records after buying the table, but it was 100% worth it. There have been other bumps in the road with cartridges, tonearms, and stylii, but overall very few of the transfers I've made since upgrading to the top table on the market have problems. The SP-10R is leaps and bounds above the Rek-O-Kut tables made by Esoteric Sound. Is a SP-10R that much better than something like a 1200-G? Probably not, but I highly value the speed control box's extreme accuracy.

mke246, now that's a huge jump. What tonearm and cartridge do you use ? And what is your phono stage ?

ELAC Miracord 630 (ca 1970)

Rega Planar 2

Rega Planar 3

Garrard 401 (currently in storage with broken tonearm and cart)

Technics 1210D Hana ML

Future? Another Technics w/mono cart

I think my first turntable was a Kenwood that I got from my Dad when he upgraded. I must have been around 15. I played the heck out of it. A decade later I bought my first new turntable, a Kyocera.

A few decades later I picked up a used Michell Gyrodec SE that I still use. I think it will be my last. I upgraded the tone arm to a SME M2-9R and I have a few cartridges and headshells that I rotate through on a regular basis.

When I’m listening to that turntable, I feel like the luckiest human on the planet.