I was responding to the general notion that vintage turntables can have a lot of hidden ‘damage’, that most people would not know how to detect or remedy. I hope i did not give offense-it was not my intention.

Also, the ‘old vs new’ heuristic is of limited value here. Many of the older tables were commodity items, oem-ed by a few factories for the bulk of the name-brand hi-fi companies. “We need a turntable with our brand name on it, with some shiny bits, to sell for $99”… Others were pretty good. Materials Science has improved, but so have greed and inflation…

Making sure that the table, arm and cartridge work well together, as a system is pretty important. So is set-up/alignment. Rega, for example, does not offer easy arm-heght adjsutment (just fixed-thickness shims) as thir cartridges are pretty much plug and play on their arms on their tables. Sound great too. Many tables try to sink the unwanted vibrations into their massive (usually acrylic) platters. Avid uses cork to force the enegery to travel down th arm to get sinked into the subchassis… Completely opposite strategy.

The Denon 103 is not a great choice for the Rega, but may be ok on the Avid.

Unless you know how to, and are able to check the arm bearings, and the drive system, you do not know whether the used turntable is even working at spec. A brand new table, from a reputable maker will be in-spec, and be working properly. Then you just have to match the cart to the arm for best performance as a system.
That said, people somehow seem to use the term ‘diminishing returns’ as if it means that you pay more and get less. You get more, just not directly proportionately to money spent. IOW, a new Rega P3 or an Avid Ingenium is extremely likely to be better than a properly functioning 1710, letter alone a used one in unknown condition.

So does NAIM - wonder why they offe so many power supply units.