Willing to be proved wrong.

Several good cartridges have already been mentioned. It looks like most of them are MM but a good MC would work also. Take a look at the Sumiko Blue Point, or the Blue Point Special if you can justify the difference. I have used and liked both of them. The BPS is better and doesn't cost that much more. Reviews are available for both of them if you want to check magazine archives. Stereophile and The Absolute Sound covered each of them.
Good luck, and have fun!

Though I don't anything about the Stanton model mentioned in particular, I would be wary of buying any phono cart from a guitar chain store. The models these stores carry are usually intended to be used for "scratching" by hip-hoppers, or for portable TT rigs that are slip-cued by DJ's under party and club conditions, and as such are built much more heavily than is optimal for home high fidelity listening.

The "Rat" (if a single unit is used in stereo mode) requires two 9V batteries and a charger (figure $30 for this @ Target, or a lot more @ RS). Other than decent sound it is dead quiet (no mains hum). To me it sounds better than the NAD stand alone unit and it easily beats any vintage budget receiver phono section that I have heard (the exception being the phono preamp in the Advent 300 receiver).

The downside is that the battery needs to be recharged every 3-5 days and it needs to be left on 7/24 for it to sound good (you will require two batteries, charging one while using the other).

So figure $60 plus the hassle.

If you want to save a few $ I do know where some of the units may be left for $16 (plus shipping) VS $25 @ RS.

For an inexpensive "plug in" phono preamp look on Ebay for a vintage Realistic/Radio Shack 42-2101. I suspect that this unit may have been designed by J. Curl (or @ least based on one of his early designs). My Rats run as dual mono's are better, but the vintage model is still a good performer and it is without the hassle of battery power. Figure $20-$25 for one of these, plus shipping (I would not pay more). I used the vintage units as dual mono's as well (my cheap/easy way of beefing up the power supply in order to increase dynamics), but one, in stereo, still sounded good.

I thank all of you for taking the time to respond. The rest of my equipment is, Creek 5350SE integ amp, Vandersteen 2C speakers, Kimber 8VS speaker wire, Zu Oxyfuel interconnects, I have other stuff, but not pertinent to this discussion. As a quick note, my Yamaha home theater receiver has a phone input, so I was able to at least hook it up and see if it was still working. I know the cartridge is shot, and the Yamaha is poor, but one thing that I remembered very well is still there. TICKS and POPS. This may be smoother, although hard to tell, but this wrecks any improvment what so ever. I think I'll stick with digital until someone figures a way to get rid of these ticks. There was, at one time a device that was supposed to do just that. It hooked between the TT and amp and somehow knew which was music and which was noise. Is that how you vinyl folks deal with this? Thanks again for the help

David, Elmuncy, the Little Rat I bought from Radio Shack only requires one nine volt battery, and it lasts a long time. No charger needed, just buy another battery. Honestly, it isnt very good compared to, for examples, the phono section of an old Mission Cyrus One integrated that I have around or an Adcom 565 preamp that I tried, or any of the receivers or integrated amps I used to have. But, it's ok.

Elmuncy, try a new cartridge with your record player, an inexpensive one, and use something to remove dust and reduce the static. Btw, they're putting ticks and pops into some cds to make them sound more like vinyl.

Unless you are in love with the technology of vinyl record playing and want to spend more money than you appear to, the chief reasons to have a turntable nowadays are 1) to play your old records and 2) to go scavenger hunting in thrift shops and garage sales like DK does and find stuff cheap that may not be available on cd. I keep one for the first purpose because there's enough on cd to interest me.