If you want to know why linear trackers are a bad idea just watch the cantilever closely while playing a record. The cantilever will deflect towards the spindle and eventually the tonearm follows, overshoots a little deflecting the cantilever away from the spindle than the whole process starts over again. What you have is an oscillating skating force. The sad fact of the matter is that the horizontal effective mass is way too high. The cartridge no longer has any leverage over the horizontal bearing. Even the Clearaudio arms do this. The right way to do this would be to read the groove lateral movement maybe optically right in front of the stylus and drive the tonearm across the record with a servo mechanism. We can get lasers to read tiny pits in plastic why not groove lateral velocity?
