Best bang for the buck turntable?

It rather depends where you live. The price of the $ makes importing very expensive for you colonials. Here in the UK, I would say Rega, Project/Origin Live are best value. I have no experience with many US decks, but have heard VPI and am very impressed, good sound and allows incremental upgrades as money allows

If you're willing to DIY, a modified Lenco can sound very good - less than $1K but you'll have to build your own plinth. See the Building High End Tables cheap at Home Despot II thread elsewhere under Analog. The original thread reached well over 3000 posts before an Audiogon moderator deleted it by accident. Modded Lencos have beat a VPI TNT II, Linn LP12, Oracle, Technics SP10, etc. according to the owners of those decks.

If you're not a DIYer, another possibility which hasn't been mentioned, and if you have a Linn dealer to help with setup, is a used Linn LP12 with Ittok arm.

Tvad, I recently sold everyting except my speakers upgraded to Jolida 1000RC and the JD 100 w/mod 2. Not getting rid of my cd's but I am looking to casually get into vinyl. they just sound sweeter to my ears even though I mostly have a very vast cd collection myself.

Thats why I stated that I dont want to spend an arm and a leg on a tt. Just looking to enhance my musical listening a bit

I do not know what sounds better. I have a DAC-1 I am using with iTunes taken off cds at full CD quality. So upsampled thats 192kHz. But reconstructed and according to Rupert Neve (google) Digital is a total mess if you think you can hear it, but your brain does anyway. Anyway my bitter experience in audio is ANYTIME I 'saved' money it was wasted time. You got to get speakers, amps, cd players, cables, turn tables, riaa phono pre amps ~ FAR AS THAT GOES ~ most consumer items we buy these days - YEAH once and a while you get a good deal BUT you get what you pay for. If you have a 3K CD Player then you got to get a turn table is made as well. I DO NOT KNOW what that TT is or costs BUT you can not get away with a Rega P3 unless it is totally modded. Sure it will sound great and be analog and depending on the phone pre and cartridge you use, you will get nice analog BUT NO WAY it will sound as sweet as the P4 or P5 ~ Unless fully modded which costs more than the TT or about as much. A GREAT CARTRIDGE can easily be $500 to $1,000 alone. MY TWO CENTS ARE THAT IF YOU SPEND $3,000 on your TT, phono pre, cartridge etc. and buy a nitty gritty cleaning machine. i.e. as much as your CD Player ~ THEN YOU WILL BE HAPPY ~ Maybe broke but VERY HAPPY ~ you spend $1,000 you will be indifferent - Then again used you can get some $3k tables for about that much you look SOOOOOOOOOO>