I would look into the Herron? that gets raves here from a bunch of folks who own it. I haven’t heard it so can’t comment on it. I would not put the money into a Steelhead unless you are after a lot of flexibility and are prepared to roll tubes- and I found that using straight in was a little too lean for my taste. I added a Lamm L2 line stage and that fleshed it out. But even with that, my overall sound definitely improved with the Allnic 3000 but I think part of this is system dependent. (Some people find the Allnic a little burnished- not 'clear' enough).
I don’t know that my system is jumpy and hectic, @Inna- it isn’t dynamic speakers and big power, but it often has the vibe of a well worn baseball glove. :)
To me, the quest for a phono stage is separate from your quest for a good table that you can live with for a long time, though Inna correctly points out that the end result of your vinyl playback will be dependent on the quality of the phono stage.
One table that always fascinated me though I never owned it was the Verdier Platine. It’s sort of the opposite of what I was recommending in terms of built in isolation, like the Kuzma Reference. But, at a certain level, there are many extremely good tables, so I don’t want to sound like have an agenda to tell you what I think is "best." There ain’t no such animal.
