Scratching, beat juggling or normal playback should not produce excessive record wear. If you are tearing the shit out of your vinyl through normal play or cutting, something is set up wrong. It is not because scratching is inherently bad for your record or that all records "wear out". Scratching should cause the same wear as repeated playback, and even after heavy play a given record should last for many years. All professional turntables should be calibrated, whether they are used for scratching, mixing, or simply playback, to insure a long life for your LPs and to optimize tracking.

Most of the guides I have come across on the web (including the "SL1200 FAQ") are incorrect. This is the proper way to adjust your turntable for optimal play and reduced wear as per Technics' instructions. You will be able to tell the difference.

Choosing a low wear cartridge is the first thing to do to reduce record damage, but the steps outlined in this guide will be beneficial with any cartridge, including concordes. An eliptical stylus will tear up the records faster than a spherical one, and some spherical styli are worse than others. The audible difference from an Ortofon Pro S concorde for example, is not worth the tear on your records, especially if you have a vintage collection. Remember also, those good records you have now will be collectible sooner or later if you don't betray the wax and stop digging (which will ensure you a particularly warm spot in Hell, FYI)! When installing your cartridge on the headshell, the cartridge should be flush with the front of the headshell, not angled. For a good spherical stylus I suggest the Shure M44-7. The Ortofons do sound a little better, but not better enough to be worth ruining your records. The M44-7 sounds good, is loud as hell, holds a grip on the record really well, and has about the lightest wear you will get from a cartridge, provided you CALIBRATE YOUR TONEARM CORRECTLY.

Now, no matter how nice a cartridge you have, if it's smashing down on the record, you're gonna wear out those grooves. Contrary to popular belief, a heavier tonearm is not better at tracking. A tonearm with too much weight will skip MORE than a properly balanced tonearm, and those double vintage copies of Amen Brother you are looping are gonna become drink coasters pretty quick. Don't do it.

First of all, turn your anti-skate all the way off, and take a look at your turntable with the platter at eye level while you are playing a record. I am going to assume you are using a Technics SL-1200(or 1210) Mark-Whatever. Your tonearm should be as horizontal as possible while playing a record. I suggest using a record you don't care about for all of the following so you don't accidentally scratch your favorite record while you are doing this, but you will need to have a record on the platter to make adjustments. Leave the tonearm lift lever down as if you were going to play a record this whole time - if you are DJing, you shouldn't ever use that thing anyway! ;) Play a record as you normally would, and eyeball the tonearm from one of the sides where you can see the entire arm, not the front or the back . Does it look straight? If it looks like it is significantly lower at the headshell end, your arm is too high. There is a little lock switch on the tonearm base that prevents you from adjusting the arm height while it is in the "locked" position. In my experience, it doesn't really matter if you forget to lock this again after you set the height, but you will need to unlock it to adjust the height. Adjusting the height of the tonearm can be done by turning the black rubber base with numbers that the tonearm assembly rests on. I have found that different decks (within the same model) sometimes display different number values for the same actual height, so you can safely ignore these particular numbers. Adjust the base so that the tonearm is as level as you can get it when a record is playing. An important note is that you want to make arm height adjustments while the tonearm is in the cradle, and then check how level the arm is during playback of the record AFTER adjusting the height. Rinse and repeat until your arm is as level as you can get it. Again, if the arm is tilted DOWN towards the record, the arm is too high, and if the headshell is sticking up higher than the counterweight, the tonearm assembly is too low. You want it as flat lookin' as you can get it, and the tip of the needle should touch the groove. There should be no excess pressure on the needle and it should not be smooshed towards the cartridge or buried in the groove. Only the TIP of the needle needs to touch the record. The least amount of pressure on the needle while still being able to hear playback is the preferable amount of pressure.

So your tonearm is straight, or as straight as you can get it. Now comes the most important step - balancing the weight of the arm relative to the cartridge. Put your record that you don't care about fucking up on the platter if you have not already. Make sure that your counterweight is NOT on backwards! The numbers should face the headshell. If your counterweight is on backwards you CANNOT calibrate the tonearm accurately, and no cartridge weighs so much that you will EVER have to turn the counterweight backwards, use a penny taped to the headshell, etc. to calibrate the tonearm. The counterweight should be at the back of the tonearm, and the arm should be pointing towards the air, in the same way it does when you remove the headshell from the arm (because in both cases the base end of the arm is heavier than the other end). Now, with the arm over the record as if you were going to play, rotate the counterweight counterclockwise until the arm "floats". I found the floating thing the most head-scratching part of this process until I realized it was really simple. By adjusting the counterweight, you are matching the weight of the headshell including the cartridge so that they are even. What you want is for the arm to be balanced so that it sits flat without touching the record when you let it go, like if you were balancing a stick on your finger, or two people of the exact same weight were on a see-saw. When it stops bobbing, it should "float" over the record but not touch it, and the arm should not start pointing towards the sky. When you are done fiddling and it is balanced, you have calibrated the tonearm to zero! This is why the little black ring on the counterweight moves independently of the weight itself. Rotate only the black ring (not the weight itself) so that "0" is lined up with the groove on the top of the back section of the arm where the counterweight sits. This groove is how you tell how much weight you have added to the arm. Now, check the documentation that came with your cartridge, or if you have none, google the spec sheet for your cartridge's model number. It will tell you the optimal weight setting. With the heavier cartridges, this is usually between 2.5-3.5. Now, rotate the counterweight so that it moves TOWARDS the headshell with your fingers only touching the metal and not the numbered ring. You will see the numbers go up! Adjust until you are in the optimal range, and play with it until you find the weight that skips the least. If you have new needles, they will need to be broken in before they will skip the least, so you can leave them playing overnight on a record that has a locked groove at the end of the program (most records have this - if you don't hear the needle going SCREECH on the label, you're fine), or just play a bunch of records. At this point, if you are ONLY going to use the deck for playback, you can increase the tracking of the arm by adjusting anti-skate to the weight value your tonearm is set for, but if you are going to cue or scratch (basically if you are going to DJ at all), you will want to leave this setting at zero.

You now have optimally balanced weight for your cartridge. Your records will last MUCH longer (I have a record with the "Ahh" sample that displays no audible degradation after several years of scratching the same "Ahh" many times a day) and your record will skip less when scratching or cueing.

This may seem confusing, but it is super easy once you've followed the steps just once. It is completely worth it both for practical (skipping) reasons, and for the life of your records. Nobody likes to hear a record that has a section sound like it's underwater when it's not on purpose, and your nice records will not lose their value just because you play them all the time. I will scratch and juggle even expensive, collectible records, and with this configuration they show almost zero wear.

It's worth it on all fronts to take a few minutes to set up your turntables correctly. Your records will thank you, your ears will thank you, your listeners will thank you, and if you ever turn to the dark side and sell off your vinyl, your customers will thank you for not ruining the wax they are buying, thereby making your collection worthless.

Don't try this at home on your dad's stereo - only under Hip Hop supervision, alright?

:)