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

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......

New records can be so dirty! The crap stiff paper sleeves are horrible! 

Usually, unwrap, give it a good cleaning, use a good inner and outer sleeve. 

Clean records always sounds better!! Plus a clean record doesn't have static. The needle doesn't need as much cleaning.