upgrade or replace rega planar 3

Upgrade to a used Sota or VPI for that budget.

Do us and yourself a favour and upgrade first those Audioquest super-junk cales unless you already did.
I would definitely upgrade the table, Rega makes acceptable arms and lousy tables. Among mid-priced tables Nottingham should be on everyone's list in addition to others.

The upgraded Rega has been compared to the Sota Star Saphire by someone who owns a Sota Star Saphire and it came out a draw. Since you have the rb600 arm, it is absolutely worth it to you. Not only that, but Rega is better for jazz than Sota.

I'm a jazz fanatic, and I have a P-3 24 with every Rega tweek known to man.

I would calculate the costs of the upgrades vs the cost of a new table minus the sale of your Planar 3. Inna's comments aside, Rega builds very nice turntables-so the Planar 3 may indeed be worthy of an upgrade, especially since you have already upgraded to the RB600 arm. Things I would upgrade in order would be:

1. New 24v motor and PSU
2. Groovetracer subplatter
3. Groovetracer plater

These upgrades will significantly raise the performance of the Planar 3 to almost P5 levels-the main issue, as I see it, is that you will still own a Planar 3. I had a similar decision to make regarding my P25-I decided to buy a used, but well taken care of, P7. I made the right decision.

Inna, my Rega P-3 fit your description, it was flat, until I replaced the tonearm wire, the motor, the sub platter, the acrylic platter, and installed the heavy weight arm balance; after that, it sang.