TW-Acustic Raven 10.5 or DaVinci Grandezza??

Dear Lewm, you are right. No one - including me ..;-) ... - can judge by eyeside whether a given stylus' polished contact areas are correctly aligned on the cantilever.
This was a great issue in the1980s with most all "audiophile" cartridges of the day. We had to deal with that.
Halcro has indeed raised a VERY important point here:
If we can adjust azimuth and do indeed use that adjustment, we may very well end up in the woods.
Now what if one mount a new cartridge and realizes that the sound is much more dominant towards the left channel?
Will you adjust azimuth ?
Instantly ?
Just a bit - and ... Yes! .... now the sound is more balanced!
Maybe there is a bit more distortion on the left channel in peaks now - but that can be fixed with antiskating set accordingly - right ?
That is a normal scenario.
But what, if the cartridge's stylus was perfectly vertical in the first.
It was just that the two coils had quite some difference in their output.
The apparent "cure" thus led to the wrong path and ultimately to damaged groove and increased disproportional wear on the stylus.
Before we use any prospective azimuth adjustment I for one would make absolutely sure first what is the output of each coil - that has to be determined WITHOUT a groove of course.
When I know the output of both coils, then I have a parameter to build upon and can judge a disbalance in the stereo output on a solid foundation.

However - given today's technique and the fact that no one has to deal with this problem in low-budget and DJ-cartridges - I still see NO POINT in accepting on a multi-hundred (thousand..) cartridge a stylus with less than perfect orientation.

Azimuth alignment should not be necessary.
If applied however, the usershould first determine the exact output of the two coils to have a sure basis.

Der,

what' the best/easiest way (tools) to determine (test) for balanced voltage output of the cart coils ?

Rockitman, all you need is an oscillating pad and a µV meter - that's it.
The technical straight way to determine coil output independent from stylus position/mounting position.
This way you get the raw coil response - totally independent of any position of the polished area to a groove.
I am sure that the "usual suspects" here on Audiogon did - of course ... - already knew it......
As always,
D.

Dear DT, Adjusting azimuth is not the best way to deal with channel imbalance that you describe in your example. Azimuth has very little effect on channel balance. Azimuth affects crosstalk, of the L channel signal into the R channel and vice-versa. This is not the same as channel balance. To prove this to myself, I once did the experiment with my Triplanar. Extreme azimuth change, from one side to the other, effected at most a 1db change in channel balance (going from extreme right bias to extreme left bias), and in doing so resulted in azimuth that was entirely unacceptable in any other way. (Stylus way over on its side, so signal was distorted and stylus wear would be an issue, and crosstalk was way off.)

Dear Lewm, I know it is crosstalk - nevertheless, give my proposition a thought and muse about what is the motivation in most set-ups to start "adjusting" azimuth ?
In other words - I for one haven't seen a mispositioned (i.e. anything else than dead 90° vertical) stylus in the last 12 years on ANY new cartridge.
So .... why do we adjust azimuth then ?