Ortofon A90 or Air Tight PC-1

Any cartridge's stylus - the Ortofon A90's Replicant 100 evo is no positive nor negative exception - requires precise alignment.
The folks at TAS are either able to align a cartridge or not. The A90 does not require any special knowledge or any special template to get it right. It - as all phono cartridges - requires ONLY dedication and a good (suitable to the geometry of the tonearm) template.
Period.
I've heard the A90 two times now in very familiar set-ups (Thuchan's being one of them) and it certainly is one of the better cartridges and incorporates a few very smart design features.
That the top-flight Ortofon LOMCs have been neglected by the fancy high-end press in the past 20 years is a different story. Ortofon simply has never in the last 2 decades been able (or willing...) to create that common type of "hype" and "myth" around its high-end products.
Plain and kind of "nude" engineering and design rarely comes along with the emotion and "special feeling" being so over-prominent in sonic descriptions and marketing papers.
And finally Ortofon isn't that prominent in advertising space in TAS neither.
However - it is a great cartridge of our day and no audiophile with basic knowledge would accuse a miss-setting of VTA for a poor performance. VTA is - by nature and geometrical law - always a matter of "groove-compliance". With the Replicant 100, the Gyger, the vdH, Paroc, Micro-ridge, Shibata or any other stylus type. Its all about the position of the polished area towards the groove angle.

Dear Ldorio, if one happen to play - from time to time ... - microgroove records manufactured between 1954 and say 1990 (and I guess thats still the huge majority of vinyl out there - AND of interest) then you will encounter so many different (and huge differences indeed) cutting angles in cutting lathes between the early Fairchild to the later Neuman (and between individual samples of the same lathe-type) that the difference in groove-compliant SRA between say a Opus 3 and a Mercury SR90000 (two extremes of the range) results in about 1/2" in heights at the tonearm base of a 9" tonearm.
Back in the old days of the Mercury/RCA-collectors circle ( Sid Marks, Bob Corsetti, David Nemzer, Carol Keasler and a few others - including myself as a late member in 1988) in the later 1980ies, that was common knowledge among analog audiophiles and the VTA was precisely fine-tuned for the setting for each of the labels of interest (DECCA SXL, EMI ASD, RCA LSC etc.).
Back then none of us would have talked about VTA in any other context but groove (label....)-compliant.
Correct SRA and VTA is a direct function of the cutting angle of the record-groove in conjunction with the polished area of the stylus.
And the engineers at Ortofon-laboratories will confirm that.
IEC standards? You visit the remaining record plants and will still find many different cutting angles around.
Ever wondered why the ET2 or the early Wheaton Triplanar back in the late 1980ies/early 1990ies were that popular among serious record collectors going for the ultimate in sound (we have to include - now that's a surprise ! - the FR-64s w/B60 vta-on-the-fly base here for addressing this issue as early as 1979) ?
Because they featured easy change of VTA and precise return to earlier and different VTA settings.

Dear Peterayer, whether the A90 and the SME V are or are not an ideal combination has nothing to do with VTA.
It has a lot to do with the effective mass of the "V", the body mass and compliance of the A90 and the general alignment you are making (to name just the "cornerstones").
I for one would rather recommend using the A90 in the SME V.
Aside from my personal opinion that the A90 is the "better sounding" cartridge of the two, its technical parameters will nicely match the mechanical/dynamic parameters of the SME V.
VTA is a matter of dedication and the will to go the extra mile time and again to get the very best out of ANY given tonearm/cartridge combination.
It wouldn't be any other way with the PC-1... or any other cartridge .... in any other tonearm.

Hi Peterayer, I've had the SME V too - back in the Eighties. Yes, it easier with the kind of tonearms like the Triplanar. However - it has nothing (read: VERY little ....) to do with record thickness, but everything (read: the HUGE portion of the whole "picture"...) with the cutting angle of the cutting head which originally cut the master for the record you are playing. As these (the cutting heads..) do (did) differ considerably in a fairly wide range in the angle they do use, it give us some headaches to get the minute detail and exact matching angle (read: VTA) with the polished area of the stylus.
The problem is system-inherent and universal.
It is the very same problem with ANY tonearm and ANY cartridge.
Some do allow easy adjustments - some don't.
Some (few....) audiophiles are very serious about matching that particular groove-compliant VTA - some audiophiles aren't even aware of the problem - and some audiophiles do not care.
To get back to the core issue: - the A90 will perform very well in a SME V.No matter whether you are willing to adjust the VTA for each record or whether you will - as most audiophiles do .... - settle for a "good compromise".