What about Uni Din?

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. 

Here is a test.  Have a person put on a album you are not familiar with.  He can choose various spots on the album.  Now you listen without seeing the turntable.  Now tell him when you hear the most and least distortion. 

If you can identify the null points successfully then I would be worried about where they are.  Also please explain  how a RS labs tone arm got rave reviews, except it is a pita to use.  It breaks almost every rule in the tone arm book.

That being said I think it is a good idea to experiment  he has a nice new tool have some fun with it.  All theory aside he has to listen to his stereo  with  his ears.

Enjoy the ride
Tom

All the science and physics related to setting up a turntable is just another part of the hobby which some enjoy and appreciate more than others.  I appreciate the fact and joy some users achieve when they view their cartridge under an electron microscope, use mega $$ protractors, test equipment and software to set up their tables.  Some may argue the virtues of using complex tools to set up their tables, but we must keep in perspective that this complex process is also a significant part of the hobby for them.