Turntable versus tonearm versus cartridge: which is MOST important?

It’s the most stupid point I have ever heard that a cartridge can’t perform without tonearm and therefore tonearm is more important.

Your turntable can’t work without electricity, so let’s say pure electricity is more important than everything else you plug in the power socket ?

You can’t even change a tonearm on most of the modern turntables! Those tonearms are good enough for your $200 cartridges. Look at the $150 Technics tonearm made a long time ago for $450 turntables like SL1210mk2, this tonearm is a worldwide standard and that was the most popular turntable in the world (they sold many millions of them worldwide)!


Tonearm problems solved long time ago for most of the people, this problem simply do not exist if you have a good entry level turntable, and if you have a phono stage, amp and speakers you’d better understand that ONLY cartridge with its stylus/cantilever/generator actually read the grooves. Change a cartridge (on a cheap tonearm) and you will change the whole sound, I’ll tell you more: change the stylus tip on your cartridge and you will change the whole sound.

Old SL1210 mkII is a very good example of entry level turntable that was $350 in the 90’s.

-Will you change a tonearm on that turntable or will you try a better cartridge first ?

In this situation a better tonearm will give you nothing if your cartridge is not good enough.

A better cartridge will make your system better without changing anything else! And if you will find a cartridge that you really like you can continue the upgrade path with much better results after tonearm swap or whatever in your analog chain.

@chakster, @rauliruegas, It appears the two of you are in agreement with each other. Together you probably have more cartridges than the rest of us combined. So I guess we will leave it at that. The two of you are on to something and the rest of us are hallucinatory. Gin and Tonic anyone?  

Tanqueray, please......

Put a Reed 3P arm on any of George Merrill's Gem Dandy polytables and mount the bargain cartridge of your choice and you can get utterly amazing sound. 
Another similar scenario is put any of the arms offered by Pure Fidelity (my choice would be the Acoustic Signature TA-2000) https://purefidelity.ca/turntables.html along with one of their tables and any reasonably good budget cartridge and again, amazing sound. 
For me, against all of my expectations years ago, it is tonearm first, table second, and cartridge last. 
When it comes to the drive system, speed control, motor noise isolation and Fremer's finger tap test are all aspects of vinyl playing that appeal to measurement nerds but in real life take a second chair to sound reliability/durability with decent but not all-out design principles. 
The turntable needs to be good, not stellar. The tonearm needs to be stellar. There a huge bargains in current cartridge offerings. 

Millercarbon said it all.
My addendum:The most economical route may be to keep on upgrading arm and table, while having a cheap(er) cartridge that can step up big way.Not all cartridges can step up when the table/arm combo is greatly elevated.I found the Audiotechnica ATF7 is such a hidden gem. Totally inexpensive LOMC cartridge, as cheap as LOMC can get. I got it as a backup cartridge to test play my second hand records. On the big table it plays in big cartridge league, and each improvement on arm / table / step up made it step up higher and higher. Athough, I have to add I never tried it on the Rega or other cheaper tables / arms, so don't know how it performs on a cheap table... but that's kind of out of the question as LOMC step up on the cheap is pretty bad. In the low price range MM is the way to go. A cheap MM cartridge that can play big time on big tables is the AT440MLa or MLb. (good luck finding MLa version! But sadly even the AT440MLb have become quite expensive now, while 20 years ago it was a cheap(ish) cartridge!) On a basic table (Rega P3, with Rega arm) for example the AT440MLb and the Grado Prestige sound quite in the same league - different presentation style, but similar performance. Put them on a big VPI-caliber table, and the AT440MLb skyrockets and the little Grado falls apart. The ATF7 is cheaper than the AT440MLb, yet on a big table it completely eclipses the AT440MLb. Yet, the AT440MLb has nothing to be ashamed of either, and its lifespan and durability is absolutely outstanding.