folkfreak,
Crosstalk will depend upon the angle that the distal end of the cantilever, where the coils are mounted in the case of an MC cartridge, makes with the stationary magnet structures that thus create the stereo signal. That part of the cartridge, the business end, cannot be seen from without; we can't know what's going on there, in most cases,without taking the cartridge apart. (Maybe you can see it in a van den Hul; I never checked.) If the magnets are not symmetrically arranged around the moving end of the cantilever, then that will affect crosstalk dramatically, in a negative way. Since it is possible to build a budget cartridge that is nearly perfect (not absolutely perfect, but nearly) in this regard, I would posit that needing a significant tilt (optimal azimuth several degrees off horizontal) is not acceptable in any very expensive cartridge. I guess one could argue over the definition of "very expensive", but $15,000 is off the charts.
Crosstalk will depend upon the angle that the distal end of the cantilever, where the coils are mounted in the case of an MC cartridge, makes with the stationary magnet structures that thus create the stereo signal. That part of the cartridge, the business end, cannot be seen from without; we can't know what's going on there, in most cases,without taking the cartridge apart. (Maybe you can see it in a van den Hul; I never checked.) If the magnets are not symmetrically arranged around the moving end of the cantilever, then that will affect crosstalk dramatically, in a negative way. Since it is possible to build a budget cartridge that is nearly perfect (not absolutely perfect, but nearly) in this regard, I would posit that needing a significant tilt (optimal azimuth several degrees off horizontal) is not acceptable in any very expensive cartridge. I guess one could argue over the definition of "very expensive", but $15,000 is off the charts.