How critical is the exact placement of the tonearm

Agreed that getting it "right" is the goal, Greg. It's fascinating to me that through the years, so many different geometries have been proposed as being right.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

I agree with Thom. But if you take care in setting it up (Really careful care) as in the VPI manual as I did. It is very rewarding.

Hi Radrog,

I think that everyone is in agreement that you can get there from here with any tool. The issue is (a) how an individual interacts with the tool - how intuitive it is to use, and (b) how much effort it takes.

To date however, I have to add that everyone who has tried an arc-style protractor will never go back. I'm sure that there will be an exception to this at some point.

Hats off to Wally for his out of the box thinking years ago.

Cheers,
Thom