VPI Scoutmaster or Nottingham Space Deck...?

Both great tables and value for the money. Do a search on the forum threads as there is much info and they both present sonics differently... you will most likely find at least two dozen members swearing each of these are the best bang for the buck in the price category...

Heard both, liked the Spacedeck a lot better - it even had a far less expensive cartridge. To my ears more life, and more natural tonal balance.

The Ace-Space tonearm is superior to the JMW-9.

I heard a Spacedeck and Hyperspace this week and was disappointed with both. I thought they were quite gray sounding and didn't do a great job of extracting information - instruments tended to blend together and imaging was quite smeary.

That being said, I preferred it with the Ace-Space arm to the fully-modded Origin Live - more refined.

I would recommend you to definitely audition before buying (because opinions on NA tend to be quite polarised) and also listen to the Michell Gyrodec which sounds quite different to the NA tables.

However, for the same money as the Space Deck you could have a Teres model 150 which will be much less colored and will help you hear more information from your vinyl.

I had a spacedeck/spacearm and liked the sound, but be warned that the instructions for set up are the worst I've ever seen & to me the design of the arm was cheesy and made tweaking a real pain in the butt.
A spacedeck with a quality arm from a different manufacturer (Rega?) I think is a good option.
Haven't played with the scoutmaster, but assuming that the jmw 9 is similar to my jmw 10, it is an easy system to live with. Also you get a real manual & good customer support.
Part of analog is finding the sound you want and the other part is finding stuff that is not a pain in the arse to live with when it comes time for set up and tuning. IMHO.