Develop a hierarchy for phono playback

Phono stage first.

Everything else has to go through it.  Not sure why folks don't see the logic behind this.  You can have the greatest TT/Cart ever but running it through a mediocre phono stage only gets you mediocre.  A great phono stage will let you hear the changes you make behind it.

Get the most phono stage you can afford.

SWS applies. 

synergy-weakest link-subjectivity. 

If I had to pick one: the cartridge. It touches the groove. You need to preserve your collection. 

There will be no consensus. 

@theflattire You can have the greatest TT/Cart ever but running it through a mediocre phono stage only gets you mediocre.

The same argument applies to each component further downstream until you get to the speakers (or hearing aids!) But what does it profit you to have great speakers with a lousy source?—you just hear well reproduced errors. And each step along the chain may magnify the errors it receives from above, so that by the time that signal gets to those speakers it is quite degraded. That's why I say the source is paramount.

But this assumes that all components are roughly equal in quality. The weakest link in the chain makes for a bottleneck, and if there is one, it should be addressed first. This year has seen me replace a cartridge, phono stage and pre-amp. Each made a difference, but you'll be glad to hear the biggest difference came with the phono stage. I'd say that was because its predecessor was letting the side down, not because a phono stage is automatically most important!

Wow - the security for this website is stronger than some banks.......

Anyhow, more important than any of these is vibration control. If you want to consider that part of the turntable, then turntable is #1. SME's make it part of the solution, Rega's for sure, don't. Otherwise, see below.

No matter how good any of the other front end components are, they will sound lousy if the cartridge is not quietly, solidly in the groove.Then importance goes down the signal processing line....cartridge/arm which need to be matched properly (I include wiring with arm), phono stage (which needs to be matched with the cartridge), and lastly turntable is the least important, assuming it spins at the right speed. It shouldn't sound like anything. Included with the turntable is the mat. Weight/clamp are more important for warped records, but would be at the bottom of the list.

Percentages are a waste of time. Everything is important, and evenly matched levels (cart/arm/PS) make the most sense. A $500 cartridge on a $10K table? Come on. A $5000 cartridge on a $1000 table? Come on.

"No matter how good any of the other front end components are, they will sound lousy if the cartridge is not quietly, solidly in the groove." And what component is in charge of keeping the cartridge in the groove? The tonearm, of course.

"and lastly turntable is the least important, assuming it spins at the right speed. It shouldn't sound like anything."  Getting a turntable to sound like nothing makes choosing a turntable critically important, it seems to me.  Most choose their TT based on how it DOES sound, not how it doesn't sound, because it is so rare to identify a TT that is colorless.

"Percentages are a waste of time. Everything is important, and evenly matched levels (cart/arm/PS) make the most sense. A $500 cartridge on a $10K table? Come on. A $5000 cartridge on a $1000 table? Come on."  Is anyone else besides me confused by this paragraph? If percentages are a waste of time, and everything is important, then why not entertain the idea of a cost mismatch?

I apologize for seeming to pick on soko; almost any comment on this subject can be so dissected.