Not according to the more informative link from Barry above, Hugo (thanks, Barry). I can't pretend to follow the more technical descriptions, but it appears that lateral tracking distortion describes what I thought was tracing and tracing error concerns the ability of different styli to emulate the cutter head. At least, I think it does ! Seems strange to have one's firmly fixed and simply explained ideas completely (as it seems) turned on their head, despite the adjectives appearing to describe the function.
MARCO, your take on 12" arms is about right; from my own experience, that is. Yes, there IS a more 'laid-back' aspect to the presentation. Not sure that there's a difference in bass, though it makes sense that the lateral tracking (ahem !) improvement could define the bass and treble better. One positive of the longer arm that I've noticed is a certain feeling of security ('solidity, almost); it just sounds more stable, esp. on busy or loud passages.
Another benefit is practicality. Both of my 12" arms are just so much easier to manipulate and cue in relation to my previous SME Five. They seem to have better balance. In all fairness, though, a change of deck from suspended to mass may be involved here. I don't think I could revert to a 9" arm now though; I'd find it too fiddly (at my age !). In addition, a 12" arm does have more mass than its shorter brethren, and this does favour most decent moving coils.
I had one on different decks; my bro.-in-law still has it. Surprised at the misspelling of 'jewelled', though, and there's that tracing error mentioned again !!!!! My arm had its bias defined by cutting off a specific length of specific thickness solder and the usual string/twisted wire carrier. Maybe that was the original FFS arm; can't remember back to '65/6. Mounted on my TD150, it made jelly seem more secure; 'Twas better on my TD125 though, and that WAS the International arm
I have a Nasotec swing headshell for SPU which works rather well at minimising tracking error ... better I think than the normal SPU headshell. I got it for use with my Royal N, which is currently on a Fidelity Research S3 headshell, but I may revert to the Nasotec at some point. Some good stuff here and a video:
http://www.highendcity.com/swing-headshell-catalog/
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I've not seen anything like that before. From a traditional rather than technical p.o.v., wouldn't this arrangement either decrease the rigidity of the arm and/or alter the compliance? Wouldn't it also be a bit of a bugger to set up with normal protractors ?
Assuming that the flexibility of the headshell allows for more accurate tracking/tracing, why hasn't this become a standard for pivoted arms, more or less obviating the need for different lengths of arm? Bit of scepticism here from an admittedly reactionary standpoint.