I, I, I .....let's talk averages. we are just a speck of the world.
I am recommending ROUTINE maintenance and basic inexpensive tools. Ability for basic diagnostics, i.e. the tube tester, the lens cleaner. ability to rule something out easily find a problem before moving on.
Checking/verifying new tubes when purchased, single or matched sets .... A full system, a problem occurs, it might be a tube, it might not, lets do a basic check, oh, I can't, I spent more than a new car but was too (cheap, unwise) to get myself a helpful tool.
Lens/Movement: we read here about failure to read: sacd/cd player; transport; don't forget computer drives, video players we are not reading about.
When problems occur, the 1st thing is to use your lens/mechanism cleaner, either to solve or rule out dust as the problem:
prior to moving on to step two, which would be: cover off, watch mechanism, belt broken? lubricant turned to mud? again, check the fundamental mechanisms, prior to the difficult to diagnose issues.
yet, here we go: guessing, jumping to conclusions, I did this, you should get this player ... all without performing the fundamental routine maintenance.
I have to wonder how much money has been spent transporting 2 ways, paying experts, and all that is needed, all that they do and bill you for: is the routine prevention/cleaning I have mentioned.
ROUTINE:
Maintenance: cleaning dust off any sensitive and transport mechanism, heads and tape paths, vcr cleaning heads and capstans of vcrs, 8 track, cassette and reel to reel.
Prevention: block/reduce the path of airborne dust you cannot see until it accumulates. If it's on the surface, more than likely dust has gotten inside.
TT DUST COVER: I prefer removable, especially when playing LPs. It's not just appearance, it's not just the platter (where dust gets transferred to the LPs; not just cracks in the plinth, where dust gets inside; dust from the bottom: the most important is the tonearm, which, if you have gone for better, best, fantastic costs a small fortune: dust on/in pivots, down inside, on the precious jewels, one of the reasons I'm going to roll over in my urn,
IMO, you must be insane to think invisible airborne dust (particulate) is magically not accumulating within ANYTHING. and: the cartridge: yes junk accumulates on/in the suspension, on the cantilever, transfers with gigantic force from lp surface to stylus.
It drives me crazy to see fantastic TT designs without dust cover options. Huge TTs, tall ones especially: solutions need to be found, perhaps a base that stays in place (except for setup/maintenance), and a lighter top section easily removed and set aside. If they can engineer those fantastic TTs, surely they can solve dust prevention!
Other than that I have no opinion on the matter.