THE HOLY GRAIL of setting up and tweaking your turntable is to make it ACOUSTICALLY DEAD. It is a mechanical pickup system. The job of the cartridge is to translate vibrations into sound. You want it to read only the vibrations caused by the stylus getting moved around by the groove. You don't want to pick up the vibrations in the record itself, or the platter, or the tonearm, or the plinth (deckplate) that it's mounted on. Waves interfere with each other. Waves can cancel each other out. For that reason, when your turntable is exposed to and transmits vibrations from the floor, you'll get more than just feedback and muddiness. Fine details also get washed out.
When you have finished a major upgrade or even a small tweak, you'll be able to play records that you're already familiar with, and realize that you're hearing more individual notes than before. Additionally, bass notes will be much tighter and more clean. Mid-range and high notes become much more distinct. When you've isolated and improved your system to the point that it's really sensitive, you'll hear that each note has a beginning, a middle and an end. And, that's when digital copies of the same music start to sound really bad by comparison.
Choosing a Turntable.
Direct Drive vs. Belt Drive.
Manual, Auto-return, and Fully Automatic. Tonearm:
Anti-Skate Mechanism. "Elegance." In industrial design generally, elegance is an important goal. Simplicity and leanness of design contribute to a final product that is dedicated to one job and does it correctly and reliably. Products that try to do more than one job never do any of them well. Extraneous design elements distract from the primary mission. Insisting on simplicity does not justify cheap construction, though. When choosing a turntable or tonearm, watch out for gimmicks. Turntables designed to be automated, or lightweight, or compact, will carry features that introduce noise or mechanical chatter. Tables that are not hefty will transmit large amounts of mechanical feedback (harmonic vibrations) from the air and the floor.
Monopivot vs Bearings. Most tonearms have two sets of bearings, one allowing it to swing radially across the playing surface of the record, and the other allowing it to pivot up and down. To avoid introducing noise, these bearings must operate with perfect smoothness. There should be no play between wand and base, and the bearing must introduce no friction and never bind up when moving. Imperfectly adjusted or worn bearings can introduce substantial chatter and impede proper tracking of the stylus in the groove. Unless you are a jeweler or watchmaker, do not attempt to service or disassemble the bearings yourself. The alternative design is monopivot. The whole tonearm wand and counterweight rest on a knife edge or pinpoint. Azimuth adjustment is achieved by moving a weight in or out from the left side. However, monopivot arms are subject to pitch and yaw, giving balance instability. If the azimuth adjustment is not correct, playback problems will occur.
Effective Length and Offset Angle. Effective length is the distance between the pivot point of the tonearm and the stylus. If you draw a direct line between these points, and another line tangent to the record groove that intersects the stylus, the angle between these lines is the offset angle. Tonearms with longer effective lengths will produce better alignment across the playing band, because it is thrown off less at the beginning and end of the band. Alignment is only perfect at the two null points, which are 2.60 and 4.76 inches from the center of the record. The offset angle of a properly designed tonearm will depend upon the effective length. Longer arms will have smaller offset angles, and shorter arms will have a larger offset angle. Neither of these values can be adjusted by the consumer.
Cueing Mechanism. Getting the cueing mechanism to drop the cartridge at the correct speed is important in order to prevent damage to your cartridge and records. Correctly set up, the needle should drop slowly enough that no thump is heard through the speakers. Most cueing mechanisms have a rotating cam at the bottom of a cylinder that pushes the piston upwards. A small amount of a highly viscous silicone fluid also sits in the cylinder, and the upward motion of the piston pushes the silicone with it, coating the cylinder walls. When the cueing lever is brought to the resting position, the cam rotates and stops forcing the piston upward. Gravity brings it back down, but the silicone in the cylinder slows its motion. Over time, this silicone fluid can degrade and leak out. Turntablebasics offers replacement silicone fluid for this purpose. Different manufacturers used fluid of different viscosities; the fluid available is 100,000 cst (centistokes). It is in the correct range for this application, but viscosity is only one factor in the equation. The other major factor is the clearance between the piston and the cylinder wall inside the cueing mechanism. After cleaning residue out of the mechanism with a Q-tip, add the new silicone fluid a little bit at a time, reassemble and test. Getting the quantity right is important. Don't just fill it all the way. That will impede motion completely. If no amount of silicone fluid will allow the needle to drop slowly enough, then consider adjusting the piston/cylinder clearance by applying a layer of clear nail polish to the piston. Before using nail polish or any other chemicals, be sure that the cartridge is not in the room, and that you have adequate ventilation. Many cartridges have an elastomer at the pivot of the cantilever that can be degraded by the presence of aromatic hydrocarbons. On a related note, never use steel wool in the same room or house. Small bits of iron dust get into the air and accumulate on the cartridge's coils.
Platter. Seek a turntable with a nice heavy platter. Keeping the record isolated from external vibrations is critical to achieving detailed playback, clean sound and full dynamic range. A real tweaker would apply a coat of silicone glue from a caulk gun to the underside of the platter to hold down vibrations. Hopefully this will not increase the mass and inertial moment sufficiently to overwhelm the motor and affect speed. The platter will also have to be rebalanced after this procedure. Any modifications you make to your own turntable are made at your own risk, of course.
Deckplate. The same considerations for holding down vibrations in the platter also hold true for the deckplate, also called the plinth. Providing a stable and acoustically dead foundation for the tonearm will yield great rewards in undisturbed playback. This is, after all, a mechanical reading system. Keeping the playback system perfectly isolated from external vibrations, making it acoustically dead, is the holy grail.
Installing aftermarket Tonearms. Most high-end turntables have modular tonearms that can be replaced. Custom-mounting the new arm should be done with a template that comes from the tonearm manufacturer. The distance between the spindle and the pivot point of the tonearm is a function of the effective length of the tonearm. Click here for more information on tonearm mounting specifications. When I installed the Grace 714 to my Empire 208, I had no template to work from and had to reverse-engineer the process using my alignment tool. I mounted the cartridge in the center of its travel in the headshell and got the cartridge body square with the headshell. Then, I balanced the tonearm to zero grams tracking force, so that it would float perfectly level. After setting the mounting shaft in the base so that the bottoms were flush, I moved the base around on the plinth, adjusting its position until I found the spot where the alignment tool's sight line pointed directly at the pivot point of the tonearm and the stylus landed correctly in the outer aligning grid. Of course the stylus was sitting an inch or so above the alignment tool during this part of the process, which made the mirrored surface of the tool indispensable.
Choosing a cartridge:
When choosing a new cartridge, especially a less-expensive one, it's important to know which types of stylus work best. The cheapest type is Spherical, and is to be avoided. Elliptical diamond styli are acceptable, but you're better off with a smaller sized one, i. e. 0.3 mil by 0.7 mil is better than 0.4 mil by 0.7 mil. Smaller styli fit more accurately into the groove and match the contours of the groove wall better. The goal is to have the stylus meet the groove wall over the largest amount of surface area possible. When this is true, the pressures exerted by the groove on the stylus as it moves the stylus around are less intense, and produce shock waves of lower intensity. It is these shock waves that cause physical disruption to the groove wall itself, and also produce resonances in the record. If you were to play a record with the amplifiers off, you will still be able to hear some discernible music from the record itself. It is these shock waves that produce the sound, and the loudness of that sound will get lower as the quality of contact between stylus and groove improves. Premium styli are often called Linear Contact, Micro Line, etc. These are much more accurately cut and are designed to have the exact same shape as the cutting stylus that made the original master disc.
The cantilever is the larger, more visible piece that connects the stylus tip to the magnetic coils in the cartridge. It is part of the replaceable stylus assembly. To work optimally, the cantilever must be very stiff, so that it accurately transmits the mechanical signal, and also very light, so that it does not impede the rapid acceleration of the stylus assembly back and forth. Making it both stiff and light requires the use of exotic materials and nano-assembly procedures. The composition and construction of the cantilever have the greatest impact on the frequency response range of the cartridge. Hence, the really good ones are expensive. It's not just the stylus that matters.
Magnetics
Load and Impedance
Capacative Load
Turntable Setup.
Foundation
Setting alignment
Adjusting azimuth
Platter Pad
Clamp
Wiring.
Headshell Color Codes.
Short Circuit Path
Cable Properties:
Purity
Grain Count
Strand Diameter
Weave
Dielectric
Record Care.
Record Shopping.
Special Applications:
Direct drive turntables have the advantage of a quick-start system. You can turn the motor off or hold the platter still with your left hand, put the needle down where you want and quickly get back up to speed. Putting the needle down with the platter sitting still allows greater accuracy and confidfence, and minimizes damage to the record and needle, as well as the harsh noise associated with unstable needle drop. However, to allow quick startup, most direct drive turntables have unusually light platters, allowing greater resonant feedback. They can also transmit more noise from the motor and bearing. Speed can be more unstable, causing greater wow and flutter. A notable exception is the Technics/Panasonic SL1100 and 1200 series turntables. They are particularly heavy, stable and quiet, as direct drive tables go. The SL1200 series is the club DJ's number one choice, and is also perfectly acceptable for audiophile playback (with an "audiophile" cartridge, not a club DJ cartridge). Belt drive turntables, on the other hand, force users to put the needle down with the platter spinning, which requires patience and skill, or a cueing mechanism that drops smoothly. Turntablebasics offers super-viscous silicone fluid for this purpose. Belt drive tables also allow greater platter mass and speed stability. Disadvantages include the propensity of the belt to stretch and harden over the years, hindering both tension and grip. Happily, turntablebasics offers a wide selection of new turntable belts.
Audiophiles prefer fully manual tonearms because their motion is undisturbed by extraneous mechanisms. Fully automatic turntables are best avoided. Auto-return mechanisms can be minimally invasive, using a trigger that only touches the tonearm shaft in the final half-inch or so of its travel. Still, I have seen a few used records out there with wear on the inner portion of the playing band that is visibly harsh.
Mass Adjustment
Be sure your tonearm has adjustable tracking weight. Arms that lack an adjustable counterweight are built only for a single model of cartridge and may cause big tracking problems. To adjust tracking weight, first calibrate the mass to zero. Dial the counterweight away from the pivot point until the tonearm floats perfectly level, with the stylus at the level of the record's playing surface. Hold the counterweight still and set the dial at zero. Then, spin the counterweight in until the dial reads the mass specified by the cartridge manufacturer. Normal audiophile cartridges typically track at 1.0 to 1.5 grams; club DJ cartridges can range from 3 to 5 grams; and 78 rpm styli should be weighted at 3 grams. But these are general guidelines. Follow the manufacturer's specification. Running the tracking weight too light can be as bad, or worse, than running it too heavy.
The spinning of the record naturally puts a centripetal force on the stylus, causing the tonearm to want to fly to the inside of the record. This force can cause an imbalance in signal strength between the right and left channels, as well as make groove-skipping more likely. Anti-skate mechanisms come in two styles: those that have a visible assembly of string, pulley and weight that produce a torque on the tonearm shaft that pulls it back to the outside of the record; and those that present only an adjustment knob next to the tonearm base. Some tonearms have no anti-skate mechanism at all. My Grace 714s have no anti-skate, and I have to keep the balance knob leaning toward the right channel to compensate.
The heart of the matter: how to properly adjust the mechanism? Some test records have blank bands at 3.5 inches and inward to the inner groove, to calibrate the anti-skate mechanism. The mass of the weight, or the notch on the bar where you attach the weighted string, or the adjustable dial, should be modulated until the tonearm sits still while riding on this blank band, at about 3.4 inches from the center, instead of floating toward the inside or outside. If you don't have a test record with this feature, then use a record with a blank side. One LP that is currently available that has a blank fourth side is Adore by the Smashing Pumpkins.
Headshell: universal, proprietary, half-inch and p-mount. The great majority of tonearms accept cartridges with a standard half-inch mount. In most cases, the headshell allows some adjustability in cartridge mounting, to allow correct alignment for a wide variety of cartridge designs. A few tonearms are completely proprietary and only the manufacturer's cartridge and stylus will ever fit. Bang and Olufsen tables come to mind in this respect. Other tables, usually the cheaper Japanese tables, have p-mount tonearm-cartridge combinations. 
Vertical Tracking Angle Adjustment.
Vertical Tracking Angle, or VTA, is the angle between the cantilever and the horizontal plane. Maintaining the correct angle is critical to achieving proper tracking performance. The basic requirement is easy: the top face of the cartridge body must be perfectly level. By extension, this means that the tonearm shaft should also be perfectly level when playing. Good tonearms will have mounts with adjustable height, to allow you to compensate for variances between the heights of different cartridge bodies. Getting this adjustment correct is pretty straightforward. First, remove the platter pad and place a bubble level on the bare metal platter. Adjust the foundation as necessary to get the bubble centered. Put a record on the platter and put the needle on the record but do not turn the motor on. Obtain a carpenter's level and crouch next to the turntable. Hold the level over the tonearm and adjust the tonearm mounting until the shaft is level with the horizontal plane.
Stylus
Cantilever
Red=Right, Non-Inverted ("positive")
Green=Right, Inverted ("negative")
White=Left, Non-Inverted ("positive")
Blue=Left, Inverted ("negative")
Capacative Load
RF Interference
Single-Ended vs Balanced Cables
Connectors
Contact pressure
Oxygen-free junction
oil, dust and dirt
record handling rules
carbon fiber brush
78 RPM
Cut and Scratch vs Audiophile