My new (old) Kenwood KD-990 turntable sounds very decent indeed. I have a strong feeling that its signal cabling is letting things down quite a bit, but it's still rather good. The deck's silence, compared with the TD-124, is startling. Arm setup is easy (at least with a Clearaudio alignment jig) and the solenoid operated lift/lower device is a joy to use. So far, so good!
One of my jobs for the coming week is to replace the external signal cabling with Van Damme Pro-Patch. I'll then know whether it's going to be worth re-wiring the arm (or rather sending it to Johnnie for re-wiring).