Dear Lewm, maybe I wasn't not clear on that one: with oscillating pad I was referring to an oscillating pad indeed - i.e. those pads do oscillate with frequencies between 400 and 2.5kHz.
During oscillation that frequency is transmitted into the coils - thus you have the very same effect as if tracking a groove.
Just doing so w/o actually tracking the groove and thus it is the "raw" coil response.
Back in the 1980s we had a nice comment about azimuth adjustment: "if you can feel or see the adjustment, - then you've already gone too far".
In other words - IF your stylus/cantilever is off the vertical ideal, it will most likely be by such a small degree, that any alternation by hand will cure it only by dump luck.
The problem is an entirely different game however if we are talking about used/second hand cartridges.
As the "art of aligning" a cartridge is a rarely taught and understood one, we will find a large portion of second hand cartridges with unbalanced worn stylus AND - most often - slightly bend/misaligned cantilever due to wrong adjusted antiskating.
I have had the pleasure to examine and listen to about 160 audio set-ups in private home sin the past 30+ years.
Including the set-ups of quite some respectable audio reviewers.
In England, the US (including HP's set-up in Sea Cliff two times in the late 1980s and early 1990s) , France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, HongKong and Mexico ( ...;-) ...).
Prices for these set-up ranged from about 20k$ to 2.8million$.
Now don't ask me in how many of these set-ups the alignment of the cartridge/tonearm was entirely correct ( not sound wise - geometrical I mean) in all parameters.
I am not referring to tangential alignment only - I mean VTF, azimuth ( ...;-) ...), most often anti skating, not even to mention groove compliant VTA/SRA.
Funny thing here however is, that I get the impression that a good portion of the audiophiles simply cope with misplaced stylus as if it were a fact of nature and beyond the reach of mankind to ensure that all top-dollar cartridge feature a dead 90° stylus.
This might either be "german" nature to insist on quality and technical flawless components when it is possible.
And it is easy possible here.
If one reads slowly and careful the posts in this thread, it is obvious that I did from the start note that azimuth adjustment SHOULDN'T be needed at all.
But apparently many audiophiles are just happy enough that any sound is coming out of their set-up at all and take lousy quality control and careless manufacturer as a penalty from higher forces laid upon the poor and miserable audiophile to suffer in the painful valley on earth.
And - by all means - forget a microscope here.
I have a bunch of good microscope photographs of worn stylus here in my files - these were taken with electron-microscopes and in special aligned settings.
Cartridge manufacturer do - and since quite some time - feature special set-ups where ultra accurate placement of the stylus is long an easy and swift procedure.
I really wonder if we would had this discussion here at all if we were talking about the spillage of cars.
No one - absolutely no one here would accept misaligned spillage in one's new car.
