So, I'm not a spring chicken, and my hands are not as steady as they used to be. However, I just bought an AT-LP120 USB turntable, and have managed to balance the tonearm, get the stylus force to within 0.07 g of the recommendation from Audio Technica, have the skating control set properly, and yet when I cue up the turntable to play my vinyl, the stylus scratches across part of the first song and then plays normally. As some of my vinyl is pretty valuable, this really p***** me off. Anybody out there have any ideas? Thanks in advance.
If you "just bought" this table, contact the retailer who sold it.
It looks as though the table is fully manual so there are no adjustment points you can locate. I would normally say either the downforce or the anti-skating are out of adjustment but I'll trust you know how to correctly set these values.
Another possibility would be a twisted tonearm lead out cable that is applying some force to the arm. That would be located under the plinth but I wouldn't recommend you start digging until you have the retailer's OK. You can all too easily void a warranty by sticking your hands inside any component.