I get that, Frank, but the signal/noise ratio is fairly low on those other forums, to be honest. But a bigger issue is that a lot of what was available in studies 50 years ago isn't available any more, or at least it isn't easy to find.I see that but I don't see ths forum as the place for it to be done.
Nothing genuinely new has come out about playing records for decades and most of what was known about record manufacture and playing when I was involved almost 50 years ago is just as true today.
There are plenty of places to read about record players, almost every hifi forum in English in fact, and IMO, it would be a shame for this forum to join in when it is a nice logical place of relative calm and good sense for the time being.
Example: I have an Audio Technica AT-440mla cartridge. This cartridge is known to be "bright", and taming the emphasized treble requires using the correct capacitive loading. Fine. But what is "correct", and how does frequency response change with capacitive loading. On other forums, I only get anecdotes without sufficient detail to tell me how to set up my own system. So, I have to do measurements myself. But wait! The test records I might use are crap, so I'm wasting my time. Some say the Thorens cables are great, some say they are crap, but I haven't see any measurements of them (I just bought a new-old capacitance meter so I can make my own measurements, but haven't gotten to it yet). I'm using the phono preamp in my Adcom GFP565, which at the time was considered one of the best phono preamps available in active preamps that mortals could afford. But the measurements of that preamp only included RIAA accuracy--nothing to support the poetry. The cartridge doesn't sound bright to me, but maybe my 62-year-old ears are applying the necessary EQ.
There's lots of information about how to repair the suspension on an old Thorens table like mine. There's lots of stuff on how to service the bearings. There are lots of articles about how to install different tonearms, or how to tweak the factory tonearm. There are lots of statements that the factory tonearm is poor, but this is not backed up by any data that I can find. There are lots of warnings about using the published compliance, because it is measured at different frequencies than the popular formulas use, but the solution is "multiply by two or so." There's lots of poetry about dust cover up, dust cover down, dust cover removed, etc., but I don't see any test results to show what these differences are and the importance of the effect. There are those who proclaim the wonderfulness of external power supplies for these, and I think there are advantages to using them, the main one being fine speed control and the secondary benefit being able to use the 45-RPM step on the pulley (which is larger and therefore will suffer less hysteresis and wear). But that is just supposition--nobody out there has put those power supplies on a scope to determine if their sine wave is clean enough to drive an inductive motor with minimal noise. Mine works well enough, I suppose, but that's just more FUD.
You were in the industry--knowledge you take for granted may not be as available or as easy to find as you think. I've spent quite a lot of effort exploring those topics on other forums, and 99% of the time I'm yelling at the computer--just answer the **** question! I own a lot of vinyl records, and even if I only ever play them once to record them to the computer, I want to do it on a system that is as optimal as possible.
Even the luminaries on this forum are complaining about having to resort to subjective language to describe their own turntable usage.
Rick "yes, mixing two threads" Denney