Took most of my first cuppa joe this morning to parse this thread.
I seem to recall adjusting this visually after balancing my tonearm in neutral, and sort of compromising on too little vs. too much movement of the TA as I made AS adjustments at outer-mid-inner points of the platter.
then adjusted VTF and as a final check, looked at the cantilever position to make sure it was centered- it was. I used a Tracking Wizard disc for TA setup initially.
Now I could have done something like played a 1 kHz tone from my Ortofon setup disc, run the cartridge output through my oscilloscope and compared L-R values in real time.
Nah. Visual and auditory seem to work for me so far.
My dad was a tool and die maker, got into plastic injection molds in the 1960’s. Company he worked for got the contract for the very first Bic pens and butane lighters. He passed on a 1% stock ownership option he regretted to his dying day. A WW2 vet, he merely said he was a Zippo man and let it go at that. I used to stop by the shop to watch him work and he showed me once how he could judge 1/25,000 inch thickness change using a thumbnail. The human machine can be nearly as accurate as machine measurements- he used laser interferometry for projects for NASA with a millionth inch tolerance, “rule of thumb” being too broad an application for such refinement.
upshot here is the last comment I read was the last I think I need before I pour another cup and move onto some paperwork-
“@lewm
9,731 posts
Use an amount that does not give you distortion in the R channel (too little) or in the L channel (too much) and does not result in a deviated cantilever after several hours of play. And then, forgeddaboudit.”
Wise words. Thanks.