Turntable advice / opinion on setup / sound.

You need to go back and read your history.  First, Exxon Corporation started paying money for clean up immediately.  The company did not wait for a court order.  Second, I am not being trite here, our legal remediation system is based on money.  The people on the bridge of the Valdez did not have the funds.  Exxon Corporation had the funds.  Legal training 101, Find the money.  Try not to conflate the issue of blame with consequence.  Enough, now back to turntables. 

Rega: ’just stick with their cartridges’ and you will be fine.’ That is what I think of as ’proprietary’ greed.

You miss the whole purpose for Rega's approach.

Most high end turntables are never set up optimally. I distributed high end back in the mid 80's - I would estimate that 80% of the high end TT's I encountered were poorly set up - as in major fundamental mistakes.

Rega's approach is to provide a complete system, no set up required. The turntable can be purchased as far as I understand with the cartridge prefitted. The Rega protractor provides the set up tools required to set any cartridge if you wish to do it yourself.

First, Exxon Corporation started paying money for clean up immediately....

One of the more interesting learnings from the Exxon Valdez spill is that where an attempt to clean it up occurred, the seabed has not recovered, but where the rest of it was left alone, nature has cleaned it up via bacteria that use the oil as a food source.

Dover, thank you for your comments.  I find the seabed recovery issue quite interesting.

You can spin an LP, or a Long Tale

this is interesting too, from wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill

Multiple factors have been identified as contributing to the incident:

• Exxon Shipping Company failed to supervise the master (ship’s captain) and provide a rested and sufficient crew for Exxon Valdez. The NTSB found this practice was widespread throughout the industry, prompting a safety recommendation to Exxon and to the industry.^[13]
• The third mate failed to properly maneuver the vessel, possibly due to fatigue or excessive workload.^[13]
• Exxon Shipping Company failed to properly maintain the Raytheon Collision Avoidance System (RAYCAS) radar, which, if functional, would have indicated to the third mate an impending collision with the Bligh Reef by detecting the radar reflector placed on the next rock inland from Bligh Reef for the purpose of keeping ships on course. This cause was brought forward by Greg Palast and is not presented in the official accident report.^[14]

Captain Hazelwood, who was widely reported to have been drinking heavily in a Valdez bar earlier that evening before the vessel left port, was not at the controls when the ship struck the reef shortly after midnight. Despite the fact that he was not on the bridge at the time of the accident, Exxon blamed Hazelwood for the grounding of the tanker and fired him from the company. He accused the corporation of making him a scapegoat.^[14][15] Hazelwood was charged with criminal mischief, reckless endangerment, and piloting a vessel while intoxicated, but in a 1990 trial, he was cleared of the three charges. He was convicted of misdemeanor negligent discharge of oil. At trial, 21 witnesses testified that he did not appear to be under the influence of alcohol around the time of the accident.^[16][17]

Journalist Greg Palast stated in 2008:

Forget the drunken skipper fable. As to Captain Joe Hazelwood, he was below decks, sleeping off his bender. At the helm, the third mate may never have collided with Bligh Reef had he looked at his RAYCAS radar. But the radar was not turned on. In fact, the tanker’s radar was left broken and disabled for more than a year before the disaster, and Exxon management knew it. It was just too expensive to fix and operate.^[18]

Other factors, according to an MIT course entitled "Software System Safety" by Professor Nancy G. Leveson,^[19] included:

1. Ships were not informed that the previous practice of the Coast Guard tracking ships out to Bligh Reef had ceased.^[20]
2. The oil industry promised, but never installed, state-of-the-art iceberg monitoring equipment.^[21]
3. Exxon Valdez was sailing outside the normal sea lane to avoid small icebergs thought to be in the area.^[21]
4. Coast Guard vessel inspections in Valdez were not performed, and the number of staff was reduced.^[22]
5. Lack of available equipment and personnel hampered the spill cleanup.^[20]

This disaster resulted in International Maritime Organization introducing comprehensive marine pollution prevention rules (MARPOL) through various conventions. The rules were ratified by member countries and, under International Ship Management rules, the ships are being operated with a common objective of "safer ships and cleaner oceans."^[23]

In 2009, Captain Hazelwood offered a "heartfelt apology" to the people of Alaska, suggesting he had been wrongly blamed for the disaster: "The true story is out there for anybody who wants to look at the facts, but that’s not the sexy story and that’s not the easy story," he said. Hazelwood said he felt Alaskans always gave him a fair shake.^[15]