Top linear trackers

Thanks everyone for your responses. It makes for interesting research! I'm hell bent on eliminating the curse of standard pivoted arms. 

@rauliruegas those are interesting options. I'm most intrigued by the Schroeder design which looks simplest. The Thales would appear to suffer from skating seen in conventional pivoted arms, due to the headshell being offset as it traverses, albeit with a changing offset. The Reed requires a battery and Michael Fremer wasn't impressed with its bass performance. Fremer couldn't fault the Kuzma as long as the dampening trough was used. I understand that it is cartridge dependent. My low compliance Soundsmith looks to be well suited. I need to see a review that directly pits the Schroeder against the Kuzma. Also, I'm not sure if I would give up anything that I'm currently getting with my SME 312S. Yes, it's got the extra length for lower tracking error, but I still hear inner groove compromises so that's why I'm looking seriously at linear trackers.

Most of my music listening is classical and unfortunately I prefer large scale symphonic pieces that of course tend to have crescendos right where you don’t want them in the inner grooves. Dave Chesky understood this well and wisely avoided the inner grooves. Maybe a handful of my LPs at most don’t portray at least a constricting effect, if not outright distortion, in the inner grooves, and that’s with a properly set up SME 312s. The degradation is subtle but it is there. If my digital rig weren’t so good and the rest of my system not as resolving, I wouldn’t be as concerned. Every review of a good LT I’ve read says that it’s a revelation to hear the ease of reproduction all the way to the end that’s not possible with the pivoted arms they’ve had. I’ve invested way too much in my analog rig to not give this a shot.

@rauliruegas I’m quite sure the tonearm is fine and I’ve run three different cartridges in it - a Benz Ruby 3, a Kiseki Purpleheart, and now the Soundsmith Sussoro, which by far tracks and reveals the best I’ve heard. It was a bit of a challenge aligning the cartridge since the SME paper alignment template is a joke, so I did quite well with my SMARTractor and adjusting the sliding base in an iterative process to get a Baerwald alignment spot on. (I’m not interested in Stevenson). Then I ran the Analog Magic software to help get the other parameters precisely dialed in. **There is no gross tracking distortion generally with my good records. Instead the soundstage gets slightly pinched or constricted**. To give one example of a great recording of mine that is however, compromised, on my well recorded copy of Paul Paray Conducts Ravel/Debussy, Mercury Living Presence reissue, one side has music well towards the center. It is there, for example, that the soundstage collapses and distortion rises moderately. This record plays tremendously until the last few millimeters! I know the grooves themselves may be limited and perhaps the engineer squeezed too much on one side. It is my hope that with a good linear tracker the range of excellent sound will be vastly increased.