One TT, 2 arms, 2 cartridges for $2,000 used?

I agree with Swampwalker. $2K would barely begin to buy one decent vinyl front end. To hope for that plus a second arm and cartridge isn't realistic. Even if you could find such a setup you'd end up with a poor approximation of both types of sound, especially on the resolving/analytical side. True resolution is hard to do, and it's never cheap.

Get one rig that's as close to analytical/resolving/neutral as monies allow. It's easy to make a resolving rig sound romantic. I can think of a dozen different ways, many of them free. But there's no way to recover the information smothered by an inherently romantic cartridge, arm or table.

Doug

P.S. If you must have opposing, artificial colorations instead of musical neutrality, how about one decent $2K rig plus a tube phono stage? You could swap tubes depending on the flavor you want. Finding tubes that change a "tight" sound to "tubby" is neither difficult nor expensive.

I generally agree - your money might be better invested in a single arm and table. If you still like to get two different flavor of cartridges, you could use an extra armwand or headshell if you like:

To give you some complete constructive solutions in your price range:

VPI Scout/JMW9 + extra armwand + 2 cartridges of your choice
Technics SL1200 + extra headshell + 3 cartridges

A few more good arms with exchangable headshells/armswands:

JMW 9
Moerch UP4
Sumiko MMT
SME 3009

Just a thought....

If you want to use different cartridges with ease, then you should get a VPI Scout. You can get a second armwand for the Scout and switch cartridges on the fly... the Scout is a brilliant turntable and it takes about 2 seconds to switch armwands on it.

Ivan

I will suggest that $2000 can get you a competent enjoyable set-up, but will add my opinion to the others' above that 1 table, 1 arm, 1 cart is the right way to start. A second cart is easy enough to add later just by adding a cart to a headshell or armpipe and this could give you "romantic-on-demand."

If you are willing to go the DIY route, you might try building a plinth for an idler wheel system. From all the raving goin on, it probably give you a very respectable table, and the plinth you build could be used to later accomodate multiple arms if you wanted.