"I have been selling and installing (and inspecting under a stereoscopic microscope) cartridges since the late 80’s. My experience has shown that Ortofon cartridges are by far the most consistent in manufacturing."
Not to start a thing, but my relatively limited experience differs from yours. When I had my Ortofon 2M Black analyzed by WAM, the stylus was way off along every degree of freedom. I realize that the standard deviation of a single sample is infinity, but the owner & chief engineer of WAM, who has analyzed thousands of cartridges, confirmed that Ortofons are, like most carts, rarely if ever spot on.
I realize that we may be comparing apples to oranges, since I don’t even know what you mean by "inspecting" -- e.g., do you break in the cartridges suspension before measuring azimuth, SRA, VTA, etc. -- so I apologize if I’m making a bad assumption. But having researched this topic in great depth myself, if only on paper, I believe that, even if a cartridge is manufactured by a company that is "one of the most consistent," that’s hardly sufficient to justify an assumption that it can be aligned by simply setting the tonearm parallel to the record surface. Doing so blindly (at least with a non-spherical stylus) is almost certain to result in misalignment. The sad truth is that the cantilvers & styluses of even five-figure cartridges are usually out of spec, sometimes so far out that they cannot ever be accurately aligned.
https://www.wallyanalog.com/wallyreference-faq
