I want to commend Rushton on the pictures thing. Damn showoff,
y' makin' the rest 'f us look lahk IDjits!
Excellent advice from all those above, particularly the part about spending some quality time in the archives before dropping major cash. I spent three months doing that before choosing my TT, arm and cartridge. As Twl rightly pointed out, component synergy is critical for an analog front end. Much more so than for digital. I've heard some very fine cartridges play pretty badly when mounted on the wrong arm, and vice versa.
I don't think anyone has mentioned that you'll have to decide between Moving Magnet and Moving Coil cartridges. MM's are less expensive, easier to set up and will match nearly any phono stage. Your flea market Sansui probably has one. MC's range from slightly to obscenely more expensive, are often very finicky about setup and require perfect matching to phono stage and/or stepup devices. Guess which type everyone on this thread listens to? It's worth the hassle, but it is a hassle.
Totally agree with AEW and Jphii on the record cleaning machine. Doing vinyl well is neither easy nor cheap. But it can be time-consuming and addicting.
Like many others here I ended up with a Teres and have no regrets at all, but there are fine tables from many manufacturers. I'll throw one possible rig out, just to give you some meat to chew on:
TT: Teres 160 ($2250)
Arm: Expressimo modded Rega RB-250, 11g eff mass ($635)
Cart: there are many good MC's < $1K (budget $750)
Phono: defer to others with more experience (budget $750)
RCM: VPI 16.5 ($500)
That's $4885, $110 less than the list price of your Eclipse. Buy some setup tools and a carbon fiber brush. I guarantee your CDP will soon have more dust on it than your LP's.
y' makin' the rest 'f us look lahk IDjits!
Excellent advice from all those above, particularly the part about spending some quality time in the archives before dropping major cash. I spent three months doing that before choosing my TT, arm and cartridge. As Twl rightly pointed out, component synergy is critical for an analog front end. Much more so than for digital. I've heard some very fine cartridges play pretty badly when mounted on the wrong arm, and vice versa.
I don't think anyone has mentioned that you'll have to decide between Moving Magnet and Moving Coil cartridges. MM's are less expensive, easier to set up and will match nearly any phono stage. Your flea market Sansui probably has one. MC's range from slightly to obscenely more expensive, are often very finicky about setup and require perfect matching to phono stage and/or stepup devices. Guess which type everyone on this thread listens to? It's worth the hassle, but it is a hassle.
Totally agree with AEW and Jphii on the record cleaning machine. Doing vinyl well is neither easy nor cheap. But it can be time-consuming and addicting.
Like many others here I ended up with a Teres and have no regrets at all, but there are fine tables from many manufacturers. I'll throw one possible rig out, just to give you some meat to chew on:
TT: Teres 160 ($2250)
Arm: Expressimo modded Rega RB-250, 11g eff mass ($635)
Cart: there are many good MC's < $1K (budget $750)
Phono: defer to others with more experience (budget $750)
RCM: VPI 16.5 ($500)
That's $4885, $110 less than the list price of your Eclipse. Buy some setup tools and a carbon fiber brush. I guarantee your CDP will soon have more dust on it than your LP's.