FWIW, IMHO, the parts used to assemble a very good analog system are secondary to a competent set up, and maintenance of the set up once achieved. Reliance on a retailer to achieve this is often futile unless the retailer is an acknowledged turntable expert and is willing to expend the effort on you and your system. Bottom line in this respect is you should expect to become proficient in handling all of the issues involved yourself if you really want to improve your system. Not a small task, but potentially very rewarding.
You presently have good stuff and I suspect, just suspect mind you, that if you took control of set up yourself, you might come close to achieving you results you want at minimum expense. For example VTA is critical, close enuf is not good enuf, and its best done by ear after initial set up. Likewise VTF. All of this assumes proper matching of cartridge and tone arm are had. You should also insure that your turntable speed is correct and stable. (An area where quartz TT’s, as opposed to belt driven ones, can excel and have meters of some sort to indicate that your speed is properly set. Also the ability to shift speed a tad can help you tune absolute pitch which is skewered in the recording (it happens). Belt driven tables can be a bit difficult - i.e. rubber belts (when used) are not only subject to expansion and contraction but they wear out. As I mentioned in a previous post thickness of the record you most frequency use is critical - too thick or thin of a record will change your VTA and to hear them at their best you have to adjust your VTA and/or VTF.
This just scratches the surface of the issues involved. Another might be for someone with angst problems is analog systems have more tweaks (including things like headshell wires which in my opinion are of overlooked importance judged by the fact that they are still very cheap and rarely discussed) available than you can imagine and some of them ARE important, one of which is dealing with obtaining correct isolation for your system.
To be (too, perhaps) blunt, if you can’t get involved in the proper set up/maintenance of a high end vinyl system by doing the work yourself I highly recommend that you adjust to the differences between what you have and what you might have, enjoy your vinyl undisturbed and learn, once again, to sit back and enjoy what brought you to audio in the first place, i.e. the music.
That said, I appreciate that you are/were a professional musician and you may think you have heard it all and have become a bit bored. I know I did. But I hadn’t - I spend a lot of time now listening to music with which I had little familiarity but have learned to enjoy. The up side of this is now, when I do pick out a Beethoven Symphony for example, I appreciate it so much more. The availability of chamber music and music for the solo piano for me to explore just bobble my little brain! :-)
Good luck RV.
