Plz make a note that
1. a good or an excellent cartridge will only be good(excellent) if it matches tonearm.
2. a bad TT can only turn things worse for a good cartridge. in this case stay with cheap one.
If you're looking at the deck >$1k, than I think cartridge will make the most difference just like Nrchy described. Moreover you can also equate the cartridge influence on the system performance to a speaker due to the relatively same electro-magnetic principal of transfering an energy. I.e. freequency curves are very unlinear just like in speaker.
1. a good or an excellent cartridge will only be good(excellent) if it matches tonearm.
2. a bad TT can only turn things worse for a good cartridge. in this case stay with cheap one.
If you're looking at the deck >$1k, than I think cartridge will make the most difference just like Nrchy described. Moreover you can also equate the cartridge influence on the system performance to a speaker due to the relatively same electro-magnetic principal of transfering an energy. I.e. freequency curves are very unlinear just like in speaker.