Gentlemen, the Stanton tonearm is underhung. Which is to say that the tip of the stylus will be short of the spindle. All or 99% of the conventional tonearms that you are talking about are overhung tonearms. Which is to say the stylus hangs over the spindle, usually by about 15 mm. With an underhung tonearm properly mounted no head shell offset angle is warranted. Yes the cantilever will achieve tangency to the groove at only one point across the surface of the LP. At that single null point, however, there will also be zero skating force. A conventional overhung tonearm is never without a skating force. Yes, at the extremes of its arc which is for example at the inner and outer most grooves there will be more tracking angle error on average then you would get with a properly mounted overhung tonearm. However, consider the fact that it is impossible to screw up the mounting of an underhung tonearm if you just set it to be tangent to the groove at the approximate midpoint of the LP surface. Whereas, any error in setting up an overhung tonearm could lose all of the benefits that you ascribe to it. Instead of two null points across the surface of the LP you might end up with none. So I contend that Stanton‘s choice of an underhung tonearm is not wrong or stupid or cheap. It is a design choice that has a lot of merit. Read a review of the RS Lab RS-A1 or the Viv Float tonearm some time to get a better idea. These are both great sounding underhung tonearms.
