There are lots of good options that should be a big upgrade, including bargain s/h options that might well suit.
Gumtree shows a Clearaudio Champion for A$2350 (or best offer) in Bentleigh.
A$4200 would get you an LP12 with the excellent Ekos arm.
There are VPI Classic Signature & TNT2 and the excellent Clearaudio Performance DC Wood on which it might be worth making an offer.
Any of those would be good s/h options - great sound at a bargain price.
If sticking to new, Rega P8 and P10 (and even the lowly P6) are also great turntables. So are the rivals from Well Tempered and Vertere and the perennial Technics SL1200.
I have never heard The Wand, but that seems well worth hearing if you want a new turntable.
An up to date pic showing my newly made tonearm pod in place.
It’s all set up correctly and dialed in after a few day’s off fine tuning.
Obviously all sitting on my lovely dense turntable top shelf from artesania.
People are probably fed up of hearing me bang on about Technics, so I won’t here, but it’s worth reading Mike_S’s posts about the used LP12 they picked up recently, it seems to be working out very nicely. And countless other owners are likely not wrong about the LP12!!
SL1200GR or SL210GR (only difference is the colour), would match your budget. That would leave about 2500 AUD for a nice cartridge, and phono amp. (Which I would recommend, as the SN3’s 470pF will make it hard to match cartridges).
For the cart perhaps the JT-80BK ? As that’s most similar (probably identical apart from colour) to the one that was supplied with the special edition SL1210GAE.
For the phono amp there’s many choices. You could look at Cambridge Audio, Lehmann Audio or MoFi Electronics.
Here’s my 1200, it’s a lovely thing, and really nice to use. I chose it over a Gyrodek and Origin Live Aurora, they all sounded great, the UX on the 1200 was what sold it to me, and the looks 8)
