To me, sometimes it's good to do something difficult at an early stage. In 1987, after playing with the common table with pivoted arm, I decided to go the way of the air-bearing linear tracking ET-2. I chose a sturdy VPI HW19MKII to set it on, and after time consuming initial set-up, little would I have thought that I was going to use the combo till now, some 25 years after. The performance was good for me that I kept thinking throughout these 2 decades that to 'improve' on its sound, I should be spending 3x more for the tonearm and 10x more for a TT, that is if I want to go 'all-out', so to speak. Kids growing up and 2 college tuition fees hosed me down. And the thing is, I've been quite happy with what it's been doing and barring a direct A/B with a Phantom/HRX combination, I really don't know what more I'll be having or what I have been missing. Re the air pump, there are many ways to skin that cat. When I started with an aquarium pump, I fabricated a steel cage with fiberglass inside to virtually seal the pump inside the latch. Result was very satisfactory. Later on, I got an original Et2 pump and that is very quiet, I can hardly hear it a meter away from it. The only thing left to do is to clean the air bearing with alcohol on cotton buds maybe once every 2 months. I have used 3 very small air filters (from Bruce T) in the course of its run, and that's it. It's been a work horse for me all these years and I like it.