T-Bone said, "Mosin, assuming different mechanisms require different sorts of tuning, how does one acquire the knowledge to know without a huge amount of experimentation what the best starting point is for a particular mechanism?"
This is a good question, and I do not have a ready answer for it, except to say that each material used should be with purpose, and not simply a guess. It is experimentation really. That, and research of the materials present and those you plan to add. If you look at a turntable as an entity unto itself, that is the only way to reach any sort of meaningful conclusion. Otherwise, you won't have a clue about what you did right, or what you may have done wrong. In the end, it may look as if it was easy, but that won't necessarily be true.
This is a good question, and I do not have a ready answer for it, except to say that each material used should be with purpose, and not simply a guess. It is experimentation really. That, and research of the materials present and those you plan to add. If you look at a turntable as an entity unto itself, that is the only way to reach any sort of meaningful conclusion. Otherwise, you won't have a clue about what you did right, or what you may have done wrong. In the end, it may look as if it was easy, but that won't necessarily be true.