TW-Acustic Raven 10.5 or DaVinci Grandezza??

^^^ My experiences mirror yours Wrm57. I have two A90's and a Shelter Harmony. Both the Shelter and the A90 I am currently using required a bit of azimuth correction based on the matching of the crosstalk between both channels with the Foz. I would never buy an arm that did not allow for Azimuth...wait, I did once before...It was the Kenner Close & Play I owned as a child. :-)

Dear Rockitman: +++++ " Most owners ask us about adjustment. To all we say: add the cartridge and listen the music, then immediately you understand, why we omit div. adjustment tools.
This tone arm is built to bring all the musicality of your LP’s! " ++++

of course, Da Vinci distortions named: " musicality!!!!

No sense at all.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.

Dertonarm, yes I'm well aware of that so what are the other sites with these items for sale then.

I think the comment was more of a snide remark by In_shore

We can go for the new Da-Vinci Master's Reference Tonearm "Virtu" incl. new azimuth adjustment. Oh, we have and optional SME adapter. Cheers !

Someone somewhere wrote of the DaVinci that lack of azimuth adjustment made for a simplified construction and in part could account for the perceived superb sound quality. And I think there may be some truth in that. The add-on mechanisms required to allow for azimuth adjustment, different as they are among different expensive tonearms, probably do introduce some measure of added distortion. These things are always a trade-off, and I would not kick a DaVinci out of my house on the basis that it lacked azimuth adjustment.

On the other hand, I have to disagree with Dertonearm. None of us, including him, can "examine" a cartridge and thereby determine whether it came from the factory with perfect azimuth alignment, mostly because the "money" is where we cannot see it, up inside the cartridge body or within the magnet structure for cartridges that do not have a "body" per se. Perfect azimuth is NOT necessarily determined by observing whether the stylus is perfectly perpendicular to the plane of the headshell; it is merely a good start in that direction. Nor do I think that most manufacturers' quality control is so good that we can expect azimuth perfection in proportion to the dollars (or Euros) spent on the cartridge. That's just wishful thinking, and if we return all cartridges that are not perfect in that parameter, most manufacturers would go broke or change businesses.

If I understand Halcro correctly, he is implying that having the capacity to adjust azimuth is actually a disadvantage, because with such tonearms there is the equal possibility that the headshell will not be plane parallel to the LP surface on any given day, just by random chance and due to limited visual acuity, even when the mounting is perfectly done. So it follows if the tonearm has provision for azimuth adjustment, one is almost obligated to determine correct azimuth and adjust for it. He may have something there.