Raul's experience mirrors my own, with one minor exception.
(I put the tone arm cabling with the importance of the tone arm, rather than with the turntable. I've heard some mediocre cabling on an otherwise decent tone arm, and after upgrading it, the performance was elevated tremendously.)
But of course, as it always is with assembling an audio system, the weakest link in your audio chain will always be the limiting factor. All of these items are very important, and upgrading one well beyond the others will yield limited benefits. So my chain of importance would be as follows:
1a. Phono Stage (and especially so with LOMC cartridges)
1b. Tone arm, (including cabling) and Cartridge
1c. Turntable
(Notice that they are all number 1 in importance, with just subtle subcategories! :-)
My two cents worth anyway.
(I put the tone arm cabling with the importance of the tone arm, rather than with the turntable. I've heard some mediocre cabling on an otherwise decent tone arm, and after upgrading it, the performance was elevated tremendously.)
But of course, as it always is with assembling an audio system, the weakest link in your audio chain will always be the limiting factor. All of these items are very important, and upgrading one well beyond the others will yield limited benefits. So my chain of importance would be as follows:
1a. Phono Stage (and especially so with LOMC cartridges)
1b. Tone arm, (including cabling) and Cartridge
1c. Turntable
(Notice that they are all number 1 in importance, with just subtle subcategories! :-)
My two cents worth anyway.