Wally Tools to Offer a New Service.

In my experience Clearaudio cartridges have always been right on the money. I have owned and examined 4 of them. One of them was the one that lost it's diamond which was covered under warranty. The one Soundsmith I have is right on the money. The AT VM75ML that I put on the Sota when I sold it was not so good. It's SRA was about 89 degrees. I had to lift the back of the arm up quite a bit to compensate. Azimuth and zenith were fine. The Grado Statement that I used for years also had the SRA off by 2 degrees as well as the azimuth being off a degree or so requiring me to tilt the cartridge a bit.

Since zenith error at the cantilever ( as opposed to overall cart 'alignment' which also involves zenith ) is a product of the cantilever / stylus assembly, which as we all know comes from a small pool of manufacturers, the cart maker has to grade them. I wonder how many get tossed?

Good question. Back in the day I must have returned at least 10 new cartridges because of cantilever stylus defects. My sense is that in general things are much better now but still examining every cartridge when it comes out of the box is a good idea. I know Elusive Disc will replace any cartridge that is remotely off. One degree of SRA error is not big deal and easy to correct for but I will not tolerate any azimuth or twist, excuse me, zenith error. I have not seen any for a while. I think the Grado was the last and I did not return that one for some reason I can't recall. 

The Transfiguration in the above article should never have made it out of the factory.

mijostyn

A "new" parameter is discussed which they are calling "zenith." I have always called it "twist" ...

It’s not a new term at all. Zenith = Horizontal Tracking Angle. It's an often overlooked alignment factor and one reason I prefer mirrored alignment gauges that allow aligning the actual cantilever.