Hi Doug. I have no personal experience with the Morch arm, so I can't really comment about that. I know that alot of people really like that arm.
To be fair, there are a couple of unipivots that can handle the Shelter well, but they are mostly higher than the $800 price range.
To comment about your questions, the adjustable azimuth feature is most important if the arm or cartridge is made wrong with bad azimuth. If it is correct, then it doesn't need to be adjusted.
I never used an arm with adjustable vertical damping, so I don't know how that improves things. I would suspect that it may have an effect on warp tracking, either good or bad, depending on how it is adjusted.
Horizontal stabilization is important, and naturally I think the HiFi mod is exquisite in this regard. But I have to recuse myself from that part of the discussion because I am the inventor and seller of said mod. There are a number of HiFi users that may want to comment about it.
The effective mass of the OL Silver is good for a cartridge like the Shelter.
Since I only have experience with the OL Silver, of the arms in question, I can say that set up and ease-of-use with this arm is easy and good. The main drawbacks of the OL Silver are that the VTA adjustment is more crude than some other arms I've seen, but it works well. The wiring loom is adequate, but not as good as the megabuck arm wiring. The stock counterweight is easily bettered by the Expressimo Heavyweight, and should be considered as a mandatory part of this arm package, for best performance. The appearance of this arm is quite pedestrian, and lacks the "wow" factor of some other arms. But it makes up for that with very good sound quality for the money. It has excellent bass response, liquid mids, and nice clear highs, and is very low in colorations. One of the least colored arms that I know of. Very musical and detailed, and not analytical. It is probably not the ultimate in any single category, but as a whole it does it all better than most arms. I'd say it is a very good value arm, and with some of the aforementioned "fishing weights" properly placed, ........well, you know.
Others who are more aware of the Morch performance characteristics can comment on that arm better than I.
To be fair, there are a couple of unipivots that can handle the Shelter well, but they are mostly higher than the $800 price range.
To comment about your questions, the adjustable azimuth feature is most important if the arm or cartridge is made wrong with bad azimuth. If it is correct, then it doesn't need to be adjusted.
I never used an arm with adjustable vertical damping, so I don't know how that improves things. I would suspect that it may have an effect on warp tracking, either good or bad, depending on how it is adjusted.
Horizontal stabilization is important, and naturally I think the HiFi mod is exquisite in this regard. But I have to recuse myself from that part of the discussion because I am the inventor and seller of said mod. There are a number of HiFi users that may want to comment about it.
The effective mass of the OL Silver is good for a cartridge like the Shelter.
Since I only have experience with the OL Silver, of the arms in question, I can say that set up and ease-of-use with this arm is easy and good. The main drawbacks of the OL Silver are that the VTA adjustment is more crude than some other arms I've seen, but it works well. The wiring loom is adequate, but not as good as the megabuck arm wiring. The stock counterweight is easily bettered by the Expressimo Heavyweight, and should be considered as a mandatory part of this arm package, for best performance. The appearance of this arm is quite pedestrian, and lacks the "wow" factor of some other arms. But it makes up for that with very good sound quality for the money. It has excellent bass response, liquid mids, and nice clear highs, and is very low in colorations. One of the least colored arms that I know of. Very musical and detailed, and not analytical. It is probably not the ultimate in any single category, but as a whole it does it all better than most arms. I'd say it is a very good value arm, and with some of the aforementioned "fishing weights" properly placed, ........well, you know.
Others who are more aware of the Morch performance characteristics can comment on that arm better than I.