I agree with what your saying but think the most thought should go to the cartridge. Good tracking is very important. The Shure V15xMR is a very good sounding cartridge (coming close in sound to my $2500 Audioquest 7000FE5) and it tracks very well at about 1 gram. They are out of production but you can still pick one up for about $200-$250. As far as protecting your records, I think the tone arm and turntable need to be of reasonable quality but the thing that will cause the most damage is the cartridge IMO. Actually the more I think about it the more I think most record damage is probably caused by putting the record back into the sleeve and cover. All of my records are in VPI sleeves etc.