Bat Shit Crazy or not, karma points! and welcome back!
Technics SL-1200 I assume? You'll find differing opinions on whether a stock SL-1200 is better or worse than the $~500 level belt drive tables, but I will say that there are a number of things you can do with the 1200 to considerably improve its performance if you want to upgrade in the future. The Debut arm doesn't have VTA adjustment, so your path is pretty limited, you could maybe swap in a 2M Blue if you want, but that's about it. The 2M Red is also not as great as its made out to be in the audio mags. The better Shure carts can definitely beat the Ortofon. With a 1200 on the other hand you could do the bearing upgrade, swap in any number of 3rd party arm boards, and go pretty high-end with it if you want. That still won't make it as good as something like a PL-7L, but that upgrade route may appeal to you more than selling the Debut and starting over when the upgrade bug bites.
edit- by that I mean to much of a hassel to mess with, as I probably wont upgrade for a while. the most I was thinking of doing with the carbon was adding a shure m97xe then a jisco stylus to get my feet wet.
ahhh feels good to be back on the death star.....uurrrrr changstar I was thinking the same thing then I read this: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-turntable/ TL;DR its wow factor sucks and when the motor heats up it slows down (I saw a youtube review that said the same thing, the reviewer had to personally go to the manufacture for them to identify the problem and I don't live in the midwest.)right now I am leaning towards the project debut carbon since it was a better cartrige out of the box (ortofon red) and better wow than the rega rp1. If anyone has any experience with both the rega and the project please do share. The model I'm looking at is the project carbon DC but for like $50 bucks more I can find a use technics so I'm debating what to do.
No I don't think so. Provided this particular example has been properly cared for, it's durable as hell and a half decent performer in stock form. There is also a much bigger support community for the SL-1200 than any of the more exotic vintage direct drives. The 1200's biggest weakness as stock is the arm. If you don't want to pay to do a Rega arm swap, you can re-wire the stock arm to significantly improve performance. Here's a pretty good guide on how its done. If this sort of table surgery scares you, there are folks that will do the work on it. http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/how-to-rewire-a-technics-sl-1200-tonearm.148792/
Denali, did you put an aftermarket sub platter on your Rega?
