Front End Advice Sought

is she a hands on kind of person looking for the best sound she can get or would she rather have a Bose turntable if they made one? Analog is very hands on, you are not going to be performing other household chores while listening to an lp in the background.
The more information you can give, the better advice you are going to get, so give us a profile as to the ease of use that is expected.

I used to spin LPs while doing household chores all the time back in the 70s when vinyl was all we had, and I still do it now. An entry-level Rega or similar is not too hard to look after and heck, if I could learn to set it up so can anyone. All you need is patience. For a phono stage I would snap up the SimAudio Moon LP3.5 I saw here a day or two ago.

Yeah, let's not forget that as finicky as WE see the LP playback process, there was a time when everybody did it.

Still, I think a $1K Thorens single-play automatic or auto shutoff with factory-mounted and aligned cartridge would be the most no-hassle approach to decent quality. The Thorens TD240 is $975 with included cartridge. That leaves an outboard phono stage. The Cambridge Audio 540P is $99, but that's not too far over. Or there's the Audio Technica PEQ3 at $69.

Another approach would be a Technics SL1200 as a fully manual, but durable and ergonomic platform at $350-500, which would leave enough budget for a better cartridge and phono stage, such as an Ortofon 2M Blue ($199) and any number of $150-ish phono stages--Pro-Ject Phono Box, Rega Fono Mini, Cambridge Audio 640P, the NAD, Music Hall PA 1.2, etc., plus a pair of Audio Advisor's AudioQuest Blue Racer II interconnects between the phono stage and the receiver.

A used, but in good condition Denon 47F, with Denon 160 cartridge should do the trick. Of course, a pre-amp to match the 160, would also be needed and a used ProJect would be a good choice. Everything could cost $600. The best feature would be a fully automatic system that the 47F has, including the repeat feature. It does not get any easier then that. Being fully automatic, tons of money are saved in stylus replacements.