Record-playing Rituals?

Never came across this thread before, but now that I have, I am sure as I never have been that I am NOT truly an audiophile. Free at last, free at last, thanks to all of you, I'm free at last!

(FLASH! Just as I finished typing the above, my girlfriend walked in the room and asked, "Don't all of you little audio-nerds get worried about each other sometimes?" I love her, I do...)

Zaike, old mate, not a chance. You've been hooked long ago and you know it....
Postscriptum: Does your lady perchance have an elder sister?

How can you say such things about me Detlof, when I commonly play my records, after their initial cleaning (if - and this is truly shocking - if I even feel compelled to give them one!), forevermore without once again ever subjecting them to any wet treatment?
Scripted-postum: Perchance yea, forsooth taken.

To wit, dear Zaike, 'tis not the unctions which do tell on you, 'tis cartridge-tonearm settings which forsooth betrayeth you as hooked through and through....

To be perfectly honest, let me admit something I have never owned up to in public before: In my rig, I have never been able to consistently identify any fluctuation in the sound I could hang my hat on when adjusting VTA or anti-skating. There, I said it! (Not that I ever claimed otherwise.) I feel so much better now. It is true, however, that the last time I futzed around with these settings, I was in a different listening room, with my old amp and phono preamp, my TT resting on a different shelf arrangement, and hadn't yet installed my tonearm damper, so I suppose I should try and belly up to the bar once again. (However, you are inescapably, irrefutably, ascendantly triumphant Detlof, inasmuch as I *have* copped to hearing differences stemming from changes in VTF, loading, clamping, damping, etc., so I do verily protesteth too much ado about nada in my merely music-loving conceits. But I want and need to, every once in a while - otherwise,...??)