I agree with Doug. Someone once told me in my Shure cartridge days (when we eyeballed everything!) that unless the cartridge was obviously "tilted" ;--) it would be "just fine". So for me, everything was "just fine" for many years.
John, the track I use on the Cardas record is No. 3 on Side 2. It's actually 32 concentric (independent) grooves, so you can drop the stylus into any one of them and it will provide a continuous signal of out-of-phase white noise. If you can set your preamp to "mono", you can take a signal out of one (either L or R) of the main outs starting with the main volume at minimum until you find the best meter range setting (unfortunately the tape outs on most preamps will remain in stereo even when the preamp is set to mono ;--) Then you adjust the azimuth for the lowest meter reading. If yur preamp doesn't have a mono setting, then you can put a 'Y' connector on either the main outs or the tape outs and hook the meter to the 'combined' leg of the 'Y'.
John, the track I use on the Cardas record is No. 3 on Side 2. It's actually 32 concentric (independent) grooves, so you can drop the stylus into any one of them and it will provide a continuous signal of out-of-phase white noise. If you can set your preamp to "mono", you can take a signal out of one (either L or R) of the main outs starting with the main volume at minimum until you find the best meter range setting (unfortunately the tape outs on most preamps will remain in stereo even when the preamp is set to mono ;--) Then you adjust the azimuth for the lowest meter reading. If yur preamp doesn't have a mono setting, then you can put a 'Y' connector on either the main outs or the tape outs and hook the meter to the 'combined' leg of the 'Y'.