Curious .. What is the compared price of your tt vs spkrs

$20k Shindo 301 TT paired with Altec 846A Valencia's acquired used from the original owner's son for $1200.  I wouldn't call it an upgrade but perhaps down the road (after I get into my final NorCal digs), I'd consider acquiring a pair of Devore Orangutan O/96's while keeping the Altecs. 

It appears that most of us agree that underperforming front end doesn't cut it, no matter how good the speakers might be. Or amps for that matter. 

Interesting hearing the comments ..Raul .. I am a musician so i think that way, just me .. Room acoustics play a huge role no matter who says what period! Sometime playback can be epic with less pricey spkrs or equipment . Often it corralates with volume your hoping to achieve . I dont know how far back to some i go but at 17 (1985) started really getting serious with my audio gear and guitars for that age i bought my first magnepans with a luxman amp then began selling high end gear, and was a live sound engineer for some big names in the 90s .. Ive seen acoustics wreak havoc on sound .. Its al about balance and unless you roll upgrades are gradual ..

Yeah, first things you do are room acoustics and wall current.
Oleschool, I once heard Paco de Lucia perform in a great concert hall playing incredible custom Conde flamenco guitar. Now that was a sound I will never forget, not to mention the music.

Nice comments in this thread. I also tend to believe in the weakest link approach.

In my experience upgrading aspects of the turntable can lead to nice incremental improvements in the sound quality, while upgrading speakers often changes the "character" of the sound.
In my system I think I have about the same retail equivalent value on my turntable/preamp as I do on my speaker/amps, but in actual money spent (out of pocket) or current market value, I have spent 3x more on my turntable/preamp than I did on speaker/amp.

It is a difficult question (which is more important, front-end or speakers), but I can say a few things
- I love my acoustat 1+1 ESLs and Golden tube SE40 and they work in my room extremely well. They were not expensive, but "punch above their weight". total retail maybe around $3000 in 1990s dollars ($5500 in today’s dollars using inflation calculator). But it cost me $1000 used when I bought them.
- Even a Rega Planar3 with grado (my first turntable) sounded very good with these speakers and amp ($600 in 2000 dollars)
- Every upgrade of my turntable/pre has been worthwhile and enjoyable. Currently using systemdek IIX-900, RB300, Denon DL301, BAT VK20 with phono board maybe retail value of $5500-7000, but it cost me ~$3000 out of pocket.

Now that I have found my little nirvana with my acoustat 1+1 and SE40, I can easily see myself continuing to spend more and more on my analog front end and might get to a point where I spent >$10,000 upgrading my turntable/pre setup, feeding my $1000 market-value ($3000/$5000 retail) speaker/amps and this would not bother me and I would not feel like I would need to upgrade my speakers to "match" the expensive front end.