---

In the preliminary set-up procedure, a short guideline describing the basic steps needed before performing any NMR experiment in AVANCE spectrometers is given. In many cases, this procedure is obvious for the user and it is usually performed in a routine way. The following steps are usually involved:

• Insert the sample (ij).
• Choose the solvent deuterium signal with the lock command
• Tune and match the probehead (wobb or atma if required).
• Optimize the shim procedure (read an optimized shim file with the rsh command or performs a gradshim if required).
• Finally, it can be necessary to perform some preliminary calibration/test or any standard experiment to check spectral widths, offsets, pulse widths, delays, ...before run the most advanced applications.