Can you ever get perfect alignment?


People are always agonizing about getting perfect cartridge alignment, or at least close to perfect, which is a good thing. But is it really possible? Assuming the diamond is perfectly aligned on the cantilever, which is a big if, the only gauge I have seen that would give near-perfect alignment is the Mint, which enables you to sight the cantilever between two tiny parallel lines. I had to give up on this because it was just too difficult with a cartridge with a small cantilever. At least for me. So the Mint and it’s progeny aside, how can anyone expect to achieve this microscopic level of alignment with any other jig? With the Basis gauge, you line the tonearm up with the lines on the jig. Ok, but you’re telling me that a human being won’t be off by a few thousandths of an inch? Or the Geo-Disc. Point the arrow at the pivot point? Are you kidding? You could probably be off by 1/4" easily. Or the Dennision. Unless there is an indentation at the exact center of the pivot - how can you ever get enough precision to work at the distances we’re talking about? Personally, I did the best I could with the Basis gauge and my setup sounds very good to me. No mistracking or other nasties, so I’m good with it. I’ll tell you one thing - my next cartridge, if I live that long, will have a large, front-mounted cantilever.
chayro
I tend to do a mildly modified baerwald, where the leadout is slightly cleaner. This tends to be the place where wear is most noticeable, IMO.
the reason I say we can’t get it perfect is because every form of alignment has only (2) points on the side of an album where the stylus is perfectly tangential to the grooves of an LP (unless you have a tangential / linear tracking turntable)
even a "perfect" alignment to a given formula is still perfect in just (2) spots- and the alignmant of the rest of the tonearm arc is a compromise.
Actually you have three dimensional space in which a cartridge is aligned.
You can get it about right with care but the record you are playing
changes the plane constantly because no record surface is perfectly flat. That is why I use a unipivot arm to compensate for this factor. The ability of the stylus to tract well is also a factor in both vertical and lateral imperfections.