You can be off by quite a bit and it will not result in such gross problems as distortion and excessive sibilance (evidence of mis-tracking). It is most likely problems with the cartridge. Two arms, other cartridges working with the arm, what else could it be?
I've only heard this with a healthy cartridge when the arm was extremely cheap and crappy--my guess is that the whole thing was resonating like crazy. The owner wanted to temporarily use a really cheap table with his new Ortofon PW cartridge. The combination didn't work and there was excessive sibilance toward the end of the record. A cheap cartridge worked in that arm with no problem. The expensive cartridge probably has lower compliance which made it less compatible, and because lower compliance high end MC cartridges tend to feed a lot of vibrational energy into the tonearm, the arm must be up to the task ((rigid, good internal damping, tight bearings that don't rattle, etc).