Batty

Van den Hul carts start around that price too.

Dad listened to Sinatra, Nat King Cole and the like, Mum was into Bobby Gentry, Petula Clarke etc. I left home at 16 and found my own way musically.

I have Usher S-520 and Castle Howards. The Castles sound so much better across the range, but the Ushers can just disappear with the right music.

Vinyl is nice and quiet, I think I need to swap carts though, using a K2 atm, not used to it, may swap for the V15 or OC9.

Probably will not have a listen until Saturday.

Vinyl arrived today.

Various problems Dave, Tech not turning up to Telstra screwing up the order and the like. Given up with NBN for the duration of my 2 year 4G contract.

Skunk Anansie 25 @25 is waiting for me at my local post office and just pre-ordered the next Edison's Children album on vinyl, CD and MP3 inc post from the states for 100aud. https://www.edisonschildren.com/shop/viewitem.php?productid=111

I have given up on Telstra supplying me with NBN, 5 attempts and 5 failures. Connect via 4G through Optus now, 500Gb plan for $80 per month.

That would work.

Could I suggest you delay your upgrade a bit and save a bit more cash, this will open up some better options for you. $400 is not much of a budget even in the second hand market. If you doubled that, you could pick up something quite nice.

Availability

Whichever has them, usually Mouser, Element14, RS and a few others.

I built most of the gear I use now, so I don't have a local go to store.

Have a look at this https://www.akitika.com/PhonoPreamp.html, don't be fooled by the price, it is a very good phono, you need to add a power supply and case, for your budget you could afford better components too. MM only though. Catman also has one, mine replaced a MF XLPSv3 I liked it that much.