Suggested entry path into vinyl...

After a couple of tries I am back into vinyl, I tried a couple of lowish TT and the results were horrible, my CD play back beat it hands down....plus you also have all the "amenities" of vinyl, like clicks and pops and with most of my old 80s Lps a lot of distortion due to over played records and wasted grooves!
I finally got an experts advice and bought a Technics SP10, an Audio Technica 1010 arm and a beautiful MM cartridge...right out of the box (well lets say just put toghether) it sounded waaay better than my CD playback... I could not believe how good it is, now after some tweaking and plinth solutions (or no plinth) it is sounding wonderful and better than some very expensive rigs I have listened to.
I spent over 2k plus phono stage, at the moment I have a Bellari on loan and we are all amazed how good it can sound in the right conditions and with the right Telefunken tube (more expensive than the Bellari itself).

Do enter into vinyl, but do it right...

Now, about availability of records; I have over a 1000 Lps from way back when, from those I think 200 are listenable (in good condition), and from those 200 I think 40 or 50 I will listen to regularly, the others are... well Cheap Trick and the sort!

I have now a huge list of Classical music 180 gram lps I want to buy, a few every month!

I suggest if possible you find a local dealer and spend lots of time auditioning gear. If anything, I've found the sound of analog gear varies much more than digital. While I routinely buy Amps and CD players from Audiogon I would never buy a used tonearm or especially cartridge. The benefit of a dealer is he will normally help set-up your cartridge/tonearm and may offer very good trade-in credit toward future upgrades. I found a local dealer (Analog Room in Northern California) that has been immeasurably helpful in my analog journey.

I would not recommend necessarily starting off with a budget system and upgrading - unless you really don't know if you will like vinyl. If you are committed to analog I would buy to the budget you have available to spend.

Good luck.

Thx Sibelius. I don't disagree with you at all. I have a number of dealers in the area. What has been frustrating is that even with very high profile dealers in the Boston area, the number of vinyl rigs available to audition is very limited to almost non-existent. Let me ask a follow-up question for those of you who own ARC CD7 and a vinyl setup. I have an all ARC front-end, including the CD7, which I found to be the least digital-sounding CD, with very liquid, smooth and natural sounding sonic character to CD playback. I envision well-put together vinyl can better the ARC CD7 on those sonic traits, and that one can get these types of results without necessarily spending an arm and a leg. Am I barking up the wrong tree here?

No you're not barking up the wrong tree. You have to be very careful about selecting the right components and ensuring they match up well together, especially the tone arm and cartridge. Proper set-up is important as well and having access to the right tools to do it yourself or resources to do it for you will help achieve your goal.

No, you should expect a good analog system to sound better than digital. If not, why spend the $? I have recently come back into vinyl after a 25 year absence. To my ears it is no contest. While I have a fairly expensive analog system ($20K) I have heard a good $2K system (Rega P3-24) sound better than digital. To my the major attribute of analog over digital is lack of listener fatigue. I can listen to vinyl all day. The only downside is that with LP's the quality of the pressing (old and new) is variable. A bad pressing will sound bad regardless of the equipment used. None the less, I can't see my going back to only buying CD's.