Willing to be proved wrong.

You'd be surprised how good a Stanton 520 SK cartridge will sound. For less than $40, it comes with an extra stylus. You can find them at a Guitar World store, or check around online. They're readily available and well worth the price for performance.

While I haven't hear one, the RS battery phono-preamp is highly spoken of on several forums. For less then $25.00 your not out a lot if it is not your cup of tea.

I don't think you can go wrong for the price with a lower cost Grado cartridge.

This is not an endorsement, but to find/buy the "Little Rat" RS phono preamp you need to go to radioshack.com. You can search for "phono preamp" or I believe the catalog number is 970-1018. For $25, it isnt bad - I don't know of anything better for the price, except, maybe, the phono section of any old receiver or integrated amp that you might find in your garage, or your neighbor's garage, or a local thrift store.

The lower priced Stanton or an inexpensive Grado are good recommendations. Your Stanton may have been a little too compliant for your tonearm and the less expensive cartridges may be better matches. I think one reason a lot of people jumped on the cd bandwagon early on (before cd players sounded good, which I think they do now), is that they were trying to use the wrong cartridges for their tonearms, and especially over-hyped low mass high compliance cartridges with inexpensive medium to high mass tonearms. They then compounded the problem by trying to track them at the lowest ratings for their cartridges and ended up damaging their records. Stay with an inexpensive cartridge and, unless you have a test record and an oscilliscope, set the tracking weight at the maximum recommended for the cartridge.

what is the rest of your electronics?
if you want to have an analogue along with your today's digital you might come to the conclusion spending at least $600 to bring up the sound to the descent level.
You can get Thorens TD160/SME3010/Shure V15vxmr setup for approximately $450 used and Creek OBH8 mm phono for arrround $125...150 used.

I also kept my old Garrard so that I would have something to play 78s on. It's OK for that, but only that. Not going to suggest you buy an expensive TT, as that is out of the question. But you might consider an inexpensive one, such as the Dual CS503-1 w/Grado ZF3E available on Audiogon for $150. In terms of tracking old records, stylus wear, record wear, cartridge compatibility, system compatibility and sonics, I think you are going to be more satisfied if you replace the Garrard.