This is bizarre in a good way. If it were not for your introductory remarks, I would have sworn I wrote this. You see, I too have 30K in tubed electronics, two 15K decks, a Manley Steelhead, and DeVore O/93's and I too used to have a VPI Classic and then a Prime. I too had Yip fashion Mints for each of my two VPI decks and went through the pains of trying to maximize "twist" using YIP's parallax lines with a jeweler's loop.Vinyl heresy-overhang induced distortion is not that important
I have learned and am of the opinion that the quality of the drive unit, the quality of the tonearm, the quality of the cartridge and phono stage and compatibility/setting of all these things (other than setting overhang) and the setting of proper VTF, VTA, SRA, and azimuth are far more important than worrying about how much arc-induced and overhang- induced (the two are related) distortion one has. I learned this the hard way. I will not go into details but please trust me-I am talking about my new ~15K of turntable components for the deck itself and excluding cartridge and phono stage. I have experimented with simply slamming a cartridge all the way forward in the headshell, placing the cartridge mid-way along the headshell slots, and slammed all the way back, each time re-setting VTF, VTA, SRA, and azimuth. I would defy anyone to pick out the differences. I have 30K of tube separates, a Manley Steelhead, and DeVore O/93’s. I submit that any differences in distortion due to sub-optimum arcs and deviations from the two null points and where they are located (those peaks in distortion) are masked several times over by distortion imposed by my tubed gear and my loudspeakers. To believe that your electronics and loudspeakers have less distortion than arc-induced distortion is unrealistic. I have heard startling dynamics, soundstaging, and detail with all three set-ups. It is outright fun to listen to and far preferable to my very good digital rig with all three set-ups.
My point is that getting perfect alignment is often, not always, like putting lipstick on a pig, I think back on my days on owning a VPI Classic and then a VPI Prime and my having Yip of Mint Protractors fashion custom-made protractors for each of these decks and my many hours of sitting all bent over with eye to jewelers loop staring down horizontal twist among parallax channels and getting overhang on the exact spots of two grids and yet never hearing anything close to the level of sound I get now. Same cartridges, same phono stage, only my turntable/arm combination has changed. I kept thinking the answer had to be in perfect alignment when it was clearly everything else but.
Thoughts? I am sure I will get all kinds of flack. But for those that do tell me I am nuts, try my experiment sometime with a top-tier deck/arm combination and report back.
And I too have reached the same conclusions about overhang.
One likely difference is that I have become a customer of Brian Walsh of ttsetup.com who uses computer software to optimize VTF, VTA, SRA, and azimuth.
I regret ever wasting time with VPI arms. The unipivot with rotating bezel underhung counterweights is a mess. The counterweight and azimuth adjustment design is crude which is why Peter Lederman designed the "counter-intuitive". I regret ever falling for Harry and Mat's hype over the "dual pivot" which proved to be 50 cents worth of junk. Having well designed arms (Reed 3P's in my case) made vinyl pleasurable again. Even without Brian Walsh, I can-and did-get my a cartridges installed pretty damned close to optimum. Patience and a well-designed arm is far better than a perfect alignment gauge and a badly designed arm.