Well; it appears you are serious. So let me say that there is a way to approach the vinyl playback scheme that makes sense.
First up; what do you need to make good sound come out of a turntable.
One; absolute speed stability. That influences pitch and detail retrieval. One of the reasons we encourage the Technics tables because they are very pitch stable. Why is that? Because the huge company behind them can offer very tightly speced motors and drive systems due to economies of scale.
Next you must find a way to drain excess energy from the suspension. Two ways to do that; large mass or carefull attention to materials. Both are costly to implement. A superlight weight table will not perform well period. If you go into the store and pick up that table; it should be real heavy.
Next you need a suspension that puts the resonance of the table below audibility. You can use mass or springs. The techinics use mass but most belt-drive suspended tables use springs. Either implementation works well if well designed.
The arm must hold the cartridge as fixed and rigid in perfect alignment with the groove. It must have very little resistance to motion in the lateral and horizontal plane; yet be very rigidly mounted and aligned. That requires expensive bearings of high quality.
The arm must also be inert to resonances which requires expensive materials and closs tolerance engineering. The Technics arm is not the best arm; but it has very good bearings and is well mounted to the table. There are many other well designed arms; and they start at around 300$ for something like a Rega RB 300.
Next; the arm must be compatible with your cartridge. In other words the cartridge has a compliance wich measures the springyness of the stylus. If you use a arm that does not work well with that cartridge you risk bringing the tonearm-cartridge resonances up into the audible band. Thats bad.
The Technics has a medium mass arm that works well with many of the modern low compliance cartridges.
Thats why we recommend it; because it does all the good things for very little money comparitively.
The Sony you mention will have poor bearings; both main and arm. Tha arm will have resonances that are audible and may not be compatible with your cartridge. Why do I say that? Because it cannot be done; to build a table with adequate engineering for under 350$ including arm.
Remmember; the Technics has a very high quality motor unit that includes a very accurate pitch control adjustment. The arm is designed to work with that table and the plinth is massive and well damped. Those attributes are hard to find in a cheap table.
Do tables exist for less money that are decent? Sure, there are a couple 300 tables around that are good but then you must purchase an arm; or if they come with the arm, it is marginal at best.There is a lot more info that can be expressed about turntables. We could write a book here. So I just offered an explanation of why I picked that table as a recommendation in order to keep the post short and simple. Feel free to ask anything about tables you want and good luck.
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