If you purchase the TT from Kevin, he thoroughly checks it out first. The tonearm damping tray and the arm rewire w/ Cardas Litz would be next in terms of priorities. Power supply upgrades would follow and then things like strobe disabler. The threaded clamp probably would be near the bottom of the list for me. I also highly recommend the isoplatmat (it really does work), there's a thread in this circle about it.
As far as cartridges are concerned, its taken me a number of tries to find one that was fully satisfying. I prefer LOMC but they do require more gain in the phono section but this is a fair tradeoff to me. I run mine in an all tubed system w/o noise problems. I am BTW not a big Ortofon fan but others seem to like them.
I have a SB in both my sysytems for Redbook, I don't think of it as background music and the convenience is terrific.