Placement. First, don't locate the turntable on a surface or in a cabinet that also supports loudspeakers, or in the acoustic peak of a room mode, as nothing will screw up your sound more than feeding energy back into the turntable. In addition, cartridges can pick up hum when they're near large transformers, so don't sit a big power amp right next to the turntable. Direct sunlight from a window can actually cause a stationary record to warp, so watch out for that, too.
Most turntables work best sitting on a rigid table or platform that isn't coupled to sources of vibration. A suspended wood floor can be a problem if you're a heavy stepper, although there are dedicated turntable wall shelves that let you get the player up off a bouncy floor. Floors tend to bounce more as you get further away from a supporting wall, and this often causes a situation where the front legs of a stand move up and down while the rear legs nearer to the wall remain relatively still, resulting in a stand that sways front to back as you walk past. If you have an unfinished basement under your music system, a well-positioned floor prop beneath the front legs of the stand might help solve this problem.
Arm and cartridge setup. Setting up the turntable itself consists primarily of installing the phono cartridge and adjusting the tonearm. If you're stuck with doing the job yourself, I won't kid you: It's a precision sport requiring patience, sharp vision, good lighting, and dexterity, all while trying to avoid trashing an expensive stylus. The steps include mounting the arm to the turntable (if it's not already there), mounting the cartridge in the headshell and connecting the wires, and then using templates and tools to optimize tracking force, antiskating, the position of the cartridge in the headshell (overhang), its lateral rotation in the headshell (zenith), the axial rotation of the arm (azimuth), and the vertical height of the arm (vertical tracking angle). That probably sounds pretty daunting, although not all arms let you adjust every parameter.
Maintenance. Once everything is running, there are a few routine maintenance tasks. Stylus cleaning is best done with one of the small, closely cropped bristle brushes provided by the stylus-cleaning-fluid manufacturers. I like to add a drop of fluid directly to the brush before gently pulling it under the stylus a half-dozen times. Remember, always brush from the rear of the cartridge forward, never the other way or side to side.
Drive belts and motor pulleys collect crud that can affect pitch stability, so I'll clean the pulley using a cotton swab dipped in alcohol and run the belt through my fingers wrapped in a paper towel dampened with Windex. (Beware of rubbing alcohol, by the way, which may contain undesirable lubricants.) Some manufacturers have specific ideas on how to do these things, such as coating a belt with talc or even using furniture wax, so check your manual first. And check your bearing oil once a year to see if it needs topping up. I've actually been called to service turntables where all of the oil had evaporated and the platter wouldn't turn anymore!
Care also extends to your LPs. Nothing is more important here than promptly returning records to their sleeves, preferably with the opening of the inner sleeve facing up, rather than out, to help keep dust out. Loose surface crud can be dispersed with a carbon-fiber brush such as the EDA Hunt, although encrusted dirt and fingerprints present a tougher challenge. For serious collectors, machines are available that can scrub the record clean using a fluid that's subsequently vacuumed off, and in my experience this is the only effective way to deal with very dirty records. I myself have used a VPI HW-17F machine for almost 20 years with excellent results.
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