Dear Gentlemans: Now that all we know that azymuth is no need it at all and that the Grandezza is now a " classic " due that is a defunct item I want to share with you my additional thoughts about:
the azymuth subject IMHO can't be take it as if the stylus is dead on: 90° or not but if we need this tonearm tool or not ( I posted that are several reasons about. ).
I think there are good reasons to ask for it in any tonearm, I will name some of them and you can think on other ones. One of these reasons is that the cartridge stylus ( even in a perfect set-up. ) has no the same wear on both sides of the tip due that what is recorded in each side groove is different and the stylus tip " suffer " different wear/degradation about over time so over time we will need to adjust azymuth to be down " there " on traget ( this kind of stylus-tip wear came with differences on bot sides when we don't take enough care cleaning perfefctly the stylus tip at each LP side we listening. Stylus dust makes a lot of harm, you can't imagine. ).
Other reason, during the proccess to stamp 5k or 10K LPs not all the 5K or 10K LP stamped with the same " stamp 2 are " cutted " the same and I mean " side by side ", in several of those LPs are differences where we need to adjust cartridge azymuth.
Other reason could be that the cutter-head amplifiers have tiny gain differences that we can fix with that tonearm tool.
Now, any one of you lately measured your amplifier or phono stage or line stage or phonolinestagepreamp or even speakers gain/output on both channels? if not please do it and you will find out differences between both channels ( different levels on it. ). Yes you can fix it through a preamp balance control or if your preamp has two independent continuos volume controls ( stepped ones does not works here. ): what if you can't do it through your preamp? well azymuth control can help.
Now, all that happen with a perfect cartridge/tonearm set up but this perfect set-up just does not exist. We are imperfect and audio belongs to imperfections at each single step in the whole audio chain so we need as many " controls " we can achieve to fix or at least try to lower all those audio imperfections.
So IMHO we have to take that azymuth subject in the whole audio system context.
Now, the cartridge build is made it by hand and we are imperfect and as we are imperfect as imperfections ( tiny tiny ones. ) are in the cartridges. That some cartridge manufacturers have 100% quality control does not means that all manufacturers are the same and does not means that that few top manufacturers have as a target not 0.00001% of tolerances but CERO tolerances: this even does not exist because the tools to do it does not exist yet. When these cartridge build tools exist and the cartridge were builded by mechanic robots then we could have a perfect cartridge not before. This is IMHO true on cartridges and in other audio items.
Need we azymuth/anti skate tonearm controls because the " market is asking for " ? NO we need it because are a useful tools and we need it to fix ( lowering. ) " imperfections ".
Can I be wrong?, could be but as any one of you this is my take in the whole subject.
Regards and enjoy the music,
R.
