Good needles and a good mixer usually helps. Don't play any records with dodgy production :)

I've got an SK2F from Stanton which sounds way better than the Vestax and Numark's we've used before but I imagine that there are several other nice sounding ones.

Drive your inputs to a reasonable level with enough headroom to avoid clipping but definitely not too quiet.

And remember if you get to a mix and shaft it up,just move the needle on the record you were mixing out of back to a break and do the mix again it's a piece of piss in SF to mark out the mistakes and sort it out...

Right, think I've written enough for the day :)