"You spent how much on that cartridge?"

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.

It does sound a bit depressing, and some of it is true and some of it is false.

He's right about proper (even paying a pro to do it) setup & alignment, turntable isolation bases, and I'll add that cartridge-to-tonearm matching is equally important, especially when dealing with vintage equipment and new production cartridges.

I've heard plenty of excellent (and some spectacular) sounding half-speed masters, and 180 and 200g "heavy" pressings.

I was indoctrinated on the ratio of cartridge-to-turntable spending until a HiFi shop owner sold me a Rega Planar 3 back in the 90s.  The turntable without cartridge was $500 at the time.  He convinced me to spend $500 on a cartridge, telling me that it was a good match for the deck and would sound way better than the $150 Goldring I was considering.  

THAT was the best move I could have made as the combination was excellent.  Mostly, I think it was due to the quality of the RB300 tonearm, which, in my opinion, turned out to be better than some arms costing many times more.

well to be honest I would build extreme sytem to listen to Wish You Were Here half speed mastered Master Sound record alone, You don't have to own massive colecton of vinyl to own great table and cartridge after all it is your money your ears and your choice..... enjoy !

I would guess there would be no bad turntable for $5k. You would have to audition them all and then choose. Just kidding.

@mulveling I have a confession to make.  I could not afford a Sota back in 1986 when I bought my HW19.  I really wanted a Sota too.  Forward to about 2008, a fellow I knew had a Sota for sale with an SME V on it.  Again at that time, I couldn't afford it.  I really wanted that Sota too.  The truth of the matter is I have never heard a Sota that I didn't like.  So you keep right on recommending Sota, and I'll keep on backing you up and thinking some day maybe....