Quoted from zombywoof:Do any of you have a recommendation for a turn table to get back into it with? I'm not looking to spend audiophile level $$$$, just something reasonably decent.
We were in the same boat as you recently, and made some mistakes along the way. IMHO the best bang for your buck in a new turntable is in the Fluance RT81. It'll have a built-in phono preamp that you can disable if you want to, and it comes with a nice Audio-Technica VM95E cartridge.
https://www.fluance.com/turntables
We upgraded our cart to an Ortofon 2M Blue which was about as much money as the whole turntable was. It sure sounds better, but not $250 better.
We've also picked up two vintage Pioneer turntables (a PL-516, and a PL-518) for about $100 - $150 from Goodwill that with a little tweaking here and there ended up being just as good, if not better than the Fluance.
Another great choice is the U-Turn Orbit plus for about $330.
https://uturnaudio.com/pages/turntables
Any of the above will get you spinning on a table that will be accurate, upgrade-able, and look nice for well under $3-$400 bucks.
Hope this helps!
-Paul