Sell quality turntable to buy top CD player?

SunnyJim, I haven't heard the Ayre or Ayon players, but the ModWright Sony 5400 is much, much better than the stock unit on both Redbook and SACD. If you could find a used ModWright Oppo 105, that, by all accounts, substantially betters both the modded 5400 and the Oppo 95. If you could stretch to $3800, you could probably get a new Oppo 105 and have it modded.

The ModWright route is a leap of faith on your first purchase. You buy something you can't hear, based on reviews and word of mouth. He has a lot of happy customers. On the other hand, if you are buying used equipment on AG it is almost always bought without audition.

There's a used Ayon CD-7 for sale right now for $2650; a fair asking price.

From all the reviews I've read about the ModWright Sony and from Brownsfan's raves, I believe it is in the same class as the Ayon, Ayre or an ARC CD. In this upper class of CDPs, jitter is controlled thru the use of a superior master clock, laser system and isolation.
The sound quality is far better than the Cambridge 840C.

An excellent line of CDPs that I have auditioned is Naim. They often appear in the classifieds in your price range.

Most analog investments are not worth the money, I can understand everyone who prefers Digital. My EMMLabs Power Supply burns down every year, but High End has its own rules. Try Oppo.

NAD M51 - Approx $2k
I have a modest vinyl rig and this DAC keeps up with it.

A few follow up comments on Lowrider's post. The ModWright Sony 5400 is a very good piece, and is certainly much better than the 840C, which I owned for a couple of years prior to the ModWright 5400.

That said, progress in digital gear, whether servers or cd players, marches on. Without a careful A/B in ones own system, it is really tough making comparative judgments. The MW Oppo 105 is reported, by Dan Wright and others, to substantially better his 5400 mod. My stock HAPZ1 server, in most respects, also bettered my Sony MW 5400 in most respects. I expect that after the modding, its going to blow the 5400 out of the water, but that remains to be demonstrated.

Increasingly, I am convinced that the only way to improve ones system is to bring in multiple pieces, do a careful comparison, keep the better piece and resell the "looser." That is a tough proposition in the digital realm, where one generally prefers newer pieces due to the rapid advance in sound quality.

Another way to approach this is to take a best guess and be satisfied if you find that what you buy is better than what you have. It is interesting that having sent my HAPZ1 to Modwright 2 weeks ago, I'm as happy as a pig in mud with my MW 5400. I think most people would be extremely satisfied with it unless they had heard something clearly better in their own system.

From what I know of the Rega sound, and the OP's move from vinyl to digital, I suspect he might want to stay away from Esoteric players (many of which I have heard) and Krell. I also suspect that the Ayon, Modwright sony or oppo, or Ayre might well provide a suitable transition away from vinyl. The cambridge 840C to my ears was decidedly digital sounding.