Given the significant chunk of change you are considering spending, a trip to a dealer with a variety of tables set up or to a show like RMAF next month would be worthwhile. You should definitely consider the arm and cart as a system, and then the cart probably needs to matched to the phono stage (w or w/o step up or additional gain stage), esp. if you are going LO MC. With a LO MC, cart loading and gain are critical to getting proper performance. If you use a step up, cart/step up matching is also critical. If you want to be able to optimize VTA and VTF for each LP, then there are a limited # of arms out there that allow you to do that repeatably. The table is important, but it is likely that any well engineered table w good speed control will do a good job for you. Your choice of table may be partly determined by your domestic situation and whether a suspended or mass-loaded design would work better for you. This is a tough area where chicken and egg decision trees abound. AS others have correctly pointed out, you are trying to make music by dragging a very tiny, sharp, very hard rock down a plastic groove containing even tinier indulations, w/o damaging the groove; then convert movement of that rock into an electrical signal, amplify the signal and use it to make a (typically) cone shaped piece of paper (or metal, or ceramic) or flat, very thin piece of plastic vibrate. Its a miracle it works at all, IMO.
