Ok two ideas. 1. Listen to a record you know very very well with headphones. Take the same record/headphones to a local record shop that has a turn table setup or a friend's house and listen 2. Buy a new needle because eventually you are going to new a new one right? Try it out and if the old one isn't that bad then you have a backup. Remember needles seem expensive 100-300 but how many records is that? Maybe less than 10 and it is the one thing that really determines how your collection sounds.