A younger person I worked with had trouble with his POS turntable once, asked me for advice, and I said the reason you're having to put a nickel on the headshell to make it track is that the whole headshell is rotated at an angle so the stylus is hitting the groove at something other than vertical. And it was mounted with one crappy screw and NOT adjustable. Let me fix you up a real TT, but you'll need a receiver to go with that. Next thing I knew he bought a 'thing' like this, and was all excited that it had built in speakers. I had to tell him that's a horrible design for a TT, putting a speaker anywhere near it.

He was slightly crestfallen and didn't ask for audio advice after that. I suspect he went on playing his vinyls and didn't want to know!