What about Uni Din?

To these ears, Baerwald has a lot going for it. I find Lofgren B, Stevensen, Uni Din or anything that is more leading edge forward in the arm to actually sound that way - forward.

Another interesting take on the process:
http://www.vacuumstate.com/fileupload/GuruSetUp.pdf

Using extensive target zone magnification, don't fall into the potential pitfall that cantilever grid alignment will yield optimal zenith - it won't unless you're running a conical stylus :-)

I find Lofgren B, Stevensen, Uni Din or anything that is more leading edge forward in the arm to actually sound that way - forward.

When you align a cartridge by Stevenson it will be backward (not forward) compared to Baerwald on a tonearm.

When you align a cartridge by Stevenson it will be backward (not forward) compared to Baerwald on a tonearm.

May have to give it a go. Thanks for that clarification!

I’ve used Clearaudio jigs in the past with a target behind Baerwald (closer to the pivot) and felt it sounded excellent.

The Uni-Din alignment does not make sense to me personally. It has higher distortion than Baerwald in the 65-70 mm area where 90%+ of my records have inner grooves that turn into deadwax (not a lot of classical here with inner grooves at 60-62 mm) and inner groove distortion would be an issue.

And it has grossly higher distortion in the outer grooves and the highest outer groove distortion among the "Big 4" alignments (if you want to count it as one of the Big 4) from about 117 mm to the outer edge (around 146 mm) of the record. 

It does have very good performance between 75mm and 115mm but I'm not hearing any kind of distortion in that area anyway on my records. Nor am I experiencing any real inner groove distortion issues that I can really hear. 

I might be imagining things but with my analog setup, if I had to pick one area of the record that might be problematic for me it would be the outer grooves from about 140-145mm or the beginning of each record. This doesn't make sense to me in terms of the numbers as the distortion figures for Baerwald (which I'm aligned to) are very close in that area to what they are in the middle of a record. And they are the lowest of any of the Big 4 alignments-again, if you are counting Uni-Din as a major alignment.

So I've come to the conclusion that I'm either imagining things in that first minute or two or have a few records where the first track is cut just a little hotter than others. Or it is a question of the cartridge suspension warming up in the first few minutes of any kind of playing session that is causing me to hear this.