What’s the dust cover for? That plastic lid that comes with your turntable is called a dust cover. It serves as necessary protection for everything on the top of the platter when your turntable is not in use. As the name implies, it prevents the accumulation of dust on surfaces that can easily be compromised by dust particles such as your cartridge. It’s also much easier to clean just your dust cover than it would be to clean every component of your turntable platter. When should it be closed / down? Any time you’re not listening to records, we recommend you leave the dust cover closed. It will serve its purpose and you’ll be thankful that your turntable isn’t a collecting a bunch of airborne nastiness on its components and surface. When should it be open / up? When you’re playing records, we recommend leaving the dust cover-up. There won’t be a significant amount of dust collecting during a listening session so don’t worry about that. If you leave it down while listening to records, you risk making the record skip upon lowering and raising the dust cover which will be harmful to both your record and your stylus. Not to mention that if your music’s cranked up loud or your turntable is close to a speaker, the dust cover being down could pick up the bass resonance and cause your tonearm to vibrate and record to skip. There’s really no benefit to leaving the dust cover closed while playing records – it’s best to open during listening sessions.
