"You spent how much on that cartridge?"

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....  

I have read here enough opinions on the Sota Sapphire that contradict my own, to the point where I am willing to believe my Sapphire was defective in some way.  I had a Star Sapphire series III as my only TT for probably the entire duration of the 1990s, or very close to it. While I owned it, I had no complaints, because I had nothing to compare it to.  But when I eventually replaced it with a Nottingham Analog Hyperspace (using the very same Triplanar on both TTs), I immediately noticed increased clarity across the entire frequency range and much better, deeper, cleaner bass response (same cartridge, too).  When I then added a motor controller to the Notts, the performance jumped up yet another notch.  My theory is that either the felt mat or the vacuum hold down on the Sapphire, or both, hindered its performance, with an added possibility that the Sota was unstable in terms of speed.  Before anyone takes too much offense, I do believe the modern Sota TTs are much better.