Fix up my old AR or get a new table?

Also, if you have not done so, search "AR" in the Vinyl Forum @ audioasylum.com. There is a lot of pertinent info contained in the archives. You can ID/research the arm as well.

I recall "Merril" modifications being popular with the AR decks (might be worth researching). Think Merril was a person/company.

I've found a bit or two on AudioAsylum tonight; I'll keep looking. Yes, Merrill offered a bunch of mods to the AR tables. Like an idiot I didn't buy any of them at the time. Merrill stopped offering those mods a while ago. Well, the only excuse I have is that back then I really didn't have the money to throw around. There's a fellow listed on the Vinyl Nirvana site that seems to have taken over (in spirit) for Merrill.

I would tune up the old AR and save up for something a notch above "budget".

As you can see from the Vinyl Nirvana site, there's a lot you can do to your AR to bump up its performance, depending on how handy you are.

I once gave away an AR turntable, and I still regret doing so.

I had the original AR Table many years ago and got all the full blown mods on it from George Merrill at the time.Then I thought vinyl was dead and I sold it for almost nothing,to this day I kick myself in the pants over this.
I had the new motor that would not hum,new platter acrylic,new outer ring clamp something simmiliar to VPI's that cost $500.00 by itself,new suspension ,also 1 inch cutout for the arm you specifically requested for the table.
The cutout was integrated with the subchassic,Your spindal was sent to them to get remachined to perfectly fit into the platter and would take a few hours to fully seat into your table once you got it back from George.I also rewired all the wires under the table with Kimber Silver and this opened things up even more,and I replaced the .22 600V cap with a Rel Cap and it still improved the sound.Oh well in life you win and you strike out.I'm back to a VPI MK3 Table now with no turning back Good Luck on your Quest..

I guess the question really is, can you get better sound for $2000 than for what it costs for the AR. A nice cartridge and arm pretty much eats it already, table aside.