What is the first thing you do when you unwrap a new vinyl record?

Sounds hellish.

Then I listen for pops and clicks and skips. Then a few days later, I listen to the music.

I just hit it with the AQ dust and static (using myself as the static ground) brush and listen to it. I recently bought the re-mixed Band Stage Fright album (just the vinyl, not the box set pile) and it sounds amazingly clean and excellent...my original version has been played a zillion times so there's that but the new one is some amazing vinyl.

@noromance On 1st play, I look for those tiny hairs being curled up from the stylus.

Passing that, I consider the age of the LP in my hands, a few of which are 50+ and deserve to have their foibles...

I did consider posting a sign next to the TT:

"If you're F'd up already, don't make me negatively add to the condition."

It was the rare soul who'd consider attempting to deal with a tangential arm anyway...too alien, too weird....*L*

Back in the day, I would record it on my R2R and then put it away.

I have moved several times over the past couple decades and am now able to sit back and unbox the vast LP collection I have amassed.  When I was just starting out (in the 60's, no less) I had a GE fold-out stereo for a number of years that then morphed into a used Thorens TT with, no kidding, idler drive. By the late 70's I had a nicer Thorens, then a SOTA, then an Immedia, and now a Technics SL-1200G. Why am I going down this list?  Because I am opening up LP's I haven't played in 50 years, which were played on those old units and well before anyone had a RCM  or a Degritter like I do now.  I started using a Dishwasher brush maybe around 1980 or so, and somewhere back then, before that actually, I buffed on some sort of groove-glide stuff, but I didn't have my VPI 16.5 until the mid-80's.  Those  records from back then, now seeing the light of day (I would scribble the month/year I cleaned them on the inner sleeve) now sound like new LP's.  That's before cleaning them again!  If I do clean them they sound like CD's, insofar as surface noise goes.  I can't tell you how shocked I am at this.  My early record care manly involved in careful handling of them and making sure the inner sleeves were oriented.  Nothing special.  Now I can get something from Discogs that sounds like it should be thrown away.  A run through my new Record Doctor X (why didn't anyone make something like this years ago???) can do remarkable things (my VPI's vacuum motor died after 40 years) and then a distilled--water journey through the Degritter makes the former throw-out into something to treasure.  I do this with all my new stuff now.  Why not?  My digital setup is great (usually) but the vinyl is pure magic for reasons I can't really fathom.  The main thing is that I have always treated those items carefully, but, honestly, not really obsessively until now.  You don't have to be crazy about it.  One more vote here for that Record Doctor X......