Thorens TD-290 or Project Debut III or ? advice


Hello,
I acquired a Thorens TD 290 (made by Project I believe) for a $100 with a virtually new Grado Blue cart. Table cover is a mess but tables is decent overall. How does this table compare a Project Debut III for tone arm, base, sound ???
I'm thinking of keeping the cart and selling the table possibly for some thing a little better. Table budget would be < $400 less cart. Used is fine. I see a Debut III posted for $249 and a Thorens TD-165 MkII for $350. Comments, advice please.

Note, I have a modded Cambridge 640P phono pre, TAD 150 tube preamp, Sonic Frontiers Power2 tube amp, QUAD 22L2 speakers.

THANK YOU@!!!!!
pdspecl
The TD290 is superior to the Debut. It has a decent arm, relatively solid base, very good motor/control board and is overall better built. It also has an optical auto shutoff, which is a nice feature. You'll need to spend about $1,000 in the new market to significantly better it.

The TD-165MkII is a superior table, but it is also (a) old and (b) spring suspended, which means it will likely need a rebuild/adjustment of its suspension, a check of the main and arm bearings, etc. So if you're not comfortable doing that yourself, add $200-$300 to the price for a tech to get it working as originally intended.