Graham Phantom Supreme?

I recently acquired this arm, I had a 2.2, and have a question for any Phantom II/Supreme owner with the bubble level.

My Basis 2500 is dead level. When I level the arm, with the bubble exactly in the middle, the sound is a bit harsh. While the arm appears to be level, it's hard to tell as its tapered, my Ruby 3 appears, by eye, to be tilted ever so slightly forward. My experience with Benz is they like a bit of negative VTA, that is tilted slightly backward. So I lowered the arm until the Ruby 3 appeared, by eye, to be tilted every so slightly backwards. While the bubble is way off, the sound improved dramatically.

At the end of day all that really counts, in VTA terms, is the vertical angle of the stylus. Just because the arm is level doesn't mean the VTA truely is neutral because the body of the cartridge may not be level. It may not line with the headshell perfectly or the stylus/cantilever may not line up and equal neutral VTA even if the cartridge body and arm are perfectly level.

Of course VTA can be a bit of a personnel preference and perhaps my ears and system simply like the way I've set it.

My question is simple. Am I correct in my conclusion that there are a number of variables and, as a result, just because the bubble is level, indicating the arm is level, doesn't necessarily mean one has neutral VTA?

Egrady, you are spot on with your conclusions.
VTA depends on the cantilever angle, angle of stylus A_N_D what kind of Diamond is used. The side walls have different cuts (and more...) and they track the information. So it is logical that every change in that "angle" will give you different results. some record collectors say, you simply have to dial it in, until it "settles". You can hear it. Another chapter is the cutting angle from mastering...
Anyway, the bubble show you that the Arm is level, it is an indicator for the user that he has a "level" from where he can do his own settings. It can't be done by eye anyway based on the tempered Armtube, the eye will be always cheated. It tried it several times, before I bought the Phantom with the bubble I used a small gauge onto the Headshell with the earlier Phantoms to get it even.

Egrady, being honest, I seriously doubt that any cartridge generator is dead-on accurate in terms of forward or lateral mounting tolerance. I often hear people (usually reviewers) saying e.g. ""every sample of Cartridge X always requires a 91 degree front face SRA setting to extract the best from it.

I'd find it hard to believe people were comfortable with generalised assumptions like this.

If I were a cartridge designer I'd be aiming for 0/90 degree orientation of the cart as a setup requirement simply because that is the the easiest setting to achieve and maintain at different VTA settings.
(There are plenty of tools which will indicate an orthogonal arm position but few that are aimed at producing an angle of decline geared to a specific cart type and arm length :)

On the basis that some designers deliberately aim for non-orthogonal mounting angles I'm glad I'm not :) :)

Egrady, it may not be SRA that's causing the sound to be harsh, there's a very strong possibility of incorrect azimuth. In all of the alignments I've done, rarely is the optimum azimuth setting at the dead level position, regardless of the cost of the cartridge. The effect can be mind blowing in some cases.

I must have been lucky....
In contrast to your experience (Egrady) everything happened strictly "by the numbers" for me.
I found that once the arm was levelled for VTF, the ideal mid-range setting of force for the Lyra Delos was perfect.
Whenever I change the VTA to suit a given weight of disc, I optimise for the best sound then find that, coincidentally, the bubble ends up bang in the centre. Nice when that happens.
My previous cart was the Music Maker III whose instructions specified that the cart face should be strictly perpendicular to the disc surface for best VTA. The arm I was using at the time, a Linn Ittok LVII, was not helpful for precision tuning of VTA (if you unlocked the arm pillar to make a super-fine adjustment there was no guarantee that you'd actually achieved it!) so in common with a lot of folk I made up for it as best I could with VTF adjustment. The cartridge actually sounded fine and tracked well at both 1.53g and 1.58g. (Range 1.5-1.6)