"You spent how much on that cartridge?"

Socalm, the general consensus among long term addicts is that a merely good cartridge on a first rate rig will outperform a great (expensive) cartridge on a mediocre rig.

Likewise the Clearaudio Concept Signature Turntable.  How about some other suggestions below say $5K US?

I like the Clearaudio Concept a lot, but for a big caveat that the magnetic bearing "Concept arm" can be a nightmare unless you’re on solid concrete slab (and even then...). IMO you want a Satisfy or Tracer arm on that deck. Also IIRC some of the motors / controllers were having issues, hence the revision to "Air" status.

I think the Rega and Technics are also good suggestions. Is it too repetitive for me to suggest vintage SOTA again? If that 1980s SOTA Star III wasn’t my 1st deck (circa 2007), there’s a good chance I don’t become the analog crazed maniac of today lol. I had it rebuilt by SOTA to Nova V specs some years ago (before all their cool materials & Phoenix Engineering upgrades), and that was nice to get the vacuum clamping working again - but really vacuum aside, it sounded JUST as good in its original state. That deck cost me $2K including FR64fx arm, and I added a new Benz Glider L2 for $800. What a starter set!

From my earlier comments, the 15K / 30K deck was Clearaudio Innovation Wood and later Master. The cartridges were Ortofon Cadenza Bronze and Benz Wood / Zebrawood / Ebony. And later an Air Tight PC-7 (which listed $2500 and is a very similar Excel build to Hana Umami Red). Fine carts to be sure, and they performed their best for me on these decks, but e.g. the Koetsu "magic" doesn’t suddenly manifest in these other makes. And likewise I bet you could find plenty of audiophiles who would prefer those over the Koetsu, too (very subjective). Cartridges have very distinct sonic fingerprints, like with speakers. 

The cartridge, tone-arm, and phono-amp are more important than the turntable, in my opinion.

The above assumes that you buy a reasonably good turntable (not a Walmart turntable).

And professionally dialing it all in is a top priority, or it will be mostly money down the drain, no matter how good the choices that you made were.

Putting your turntable on a vibration control platform is also critical.  There are third party footers that also do wonders for controlling vibrations, even if you think that you have none.

And finally, the specific pressings that you play can either make your turntable shine, or bring it to its knees (most will do the latter).  An unfortunate reality is the nearly absent quality control in the pressing plants, and the incompetence with the studio's mixing and mastering engineers.

No dream rig in the world can fix defectively produced pressings (and 80%+ are defective, to my ears).

Even on pressings with to-die-for sound quality, you will rarely hear all of the songs have that sound quality (I have never heard all songs have outstanding sound quality).  So that points to the incompetence with the studio's mixing and mastering personnel, when one or more songs on a side sound amazing, but not all of the songs on that same side sound amazing.

Digital has the same issues.  One or two songs on an album will sound fantastic, and the rest fall short.

Back to the cartridge choice:

My first cartridge was ¼ the cost of my turntable, and my phono-amp was ½ the cost of my turntable.  Both the cartridge and the phono amp were poor choices.

Upgrading them helped a great deal.  Then I had my local store's turntable guru dial in my turntable's tone-arm / cartridge, and that was revolutionary (like my equipment just tripled in price).

Approximately 5 months ago, I upgraded my cartridge, again, and that helped, again, but not nearly as much as my initial upgrades, vibration control remedy, and professionally dialing in everything by a turntable expert.  And with white hot stamper pressings, my vinyl sounds great.  But I have a small collection, because I buy and dump most of my purchases.  It is hard and expensive to land great sounding pressings, and I stopped purchasing pressings nearly 10 years ago, as it got too expensive to keep buying defective pressings.

Never purchase heavy vinyl, or half-speed masters, or mixing and mastering supervised by [fill in famous artist name] pressings, or re-masters.  None of them sound good, in my experience -- all are cash grabs.  And nothing, since approximately the year 2000 sounds good (I believe that the vinyl formula changed).

I can't speak for specialty pressings.  I purchase popular music from the 1960s through the 1980s.

In my local high-end store, they have two wildly good turntables in their "big" room.  One costs $15,000 and the other more than double that.  Both sound virtually the same to me, except whichever one they happen to have a better cartridge on always sounds better.  I have heard Clearaudio, DS Audio, Hana, Lyra, and Benz cartridges mixed between their two outstanding turntables, and the one with the better cartridge always took the win.

If you have a revealing stereo, get a Townshend Seismic Platform, or Stack Audio footers, or AV Room Service footers, etc, and your ears will thank you.

Also have a professional dial in your turntable / tone-arm / cartridge.

A good turntable matters.  But the above equipment (including the phono-amp), cherry-picked pressings, and dialing it all in is more important, to my ears, than going to town on a more expensive turntable.

I don't think a ratio is appropriate because the ratio will change assuming you like vinyl. It is open ended... the better the system the more likely you are to add more albums and change  the ration... assuming you are planning on living on for a while. 

Ratios of cost can be useful in components. 

Seymour, reading your depressing assessment of the vinyl world, one wonders why you continue in the genre. My experience is that the better your equipment, the more of your LPs will sound very good and give you a satisfying listening experience. And way more than half the LPs I own are in the positive category. (By your estimate, 80% are poor.). I also would question your statement that LPs produced after 2000 are all of poor quality.  Yes, there are some clunkers for sure but not all of them.  At the same time, you say to avoid "heavy vinyl, or half-speed masters, or mixing and mastering supervised by [fill in famous artist name] pressings, or re-masters."  I am as cynical as the next guy, but maybe your strict rule in part accounts for your experience; you may be consciously avoiding some good stuff.