stanton str 8 80 ?

SAEC made some tonearms with insufficient offset angle! Again, a case of BAD engineering!

 Gentlemen, the Stanton tonearm is underhung. Which is to say that the tip of the stylus will be short of the spindle. All or 99% of the conventional tonearms that you are talking about are overhung tonearms. Which is to say the stylus hangs over the spindle, usually by about 15 mm. With an underhung tonearm properly mounted no head shell offset angle is warranted. Yes the cantilever will achieve tangency to the groove at only one point across the surface of the LP. At that single null point, however, there will also be zero skating force. A conventional overhung tonearm is never without a skating force. Yes, at the extremes of its arc which is for example at the inner and outer most grooves there will be more tracking angle error on average then you would get with a properly mounted overhung tonearm. However, consider the fact that it is  impossible to screw up the mounting of an underhung tonearm if you just set it to be tangent to the groove at the approximate midpoint of the LP surface. Whereas, any error in setting up an overhung tonearm could lose all of the benefits that you ascribe to it. Instead of two null points across the surface of the LP you might end up with none. So I contend that Stanton‘s choice of an underhung tonearm is not wrong or stupid or cheap. It is a design choice that has a lot of merit. Read a review of the RS Lab RS-A1 or the Viv Float tonearm some time to get a better idea. These are both great sounding underhung tonearms.

Rocky, your tonearm is just fine. Let us know how it sounds.

It’s funny to compare extremely expensive ViV Rigid Float tonearm (price tag is over $2k) to cheap as chips Stanton tonearm with price tag under $100. They are designed for two different audience, completely different.

ViV is for critical audiophiles with High-End turntables.

Stanton is for teenagers to play records at High School discoteque.

It might be OK for Spherical stylus tip which is the most forgiving to set up. Other companies like Vestax also designed turntables with straigh tonearm, but those turntables designed for skratchers as a tool to scratch records (special kind of performance). All they need is to avoid skipping of the conical needle across the record surface. If a manufacturer can make a turntable with more stable tonearm just for battle/scratch DJs then they could sell more turntables, because this is all they need, nobody cares about sound quality when it comes to a turntable designed for battle/scratch DJs. This is just a professional instrument, the main function is to keep the needle in the groove when people jump on the stage near the DJ while he’s scratchin’. I think this is the only reason why manufacturers like Stanton, Vestax designed turntables with straight tonearms (just for skratchers), they have a conventional pivoted tonearms for the rest of the DJs on their different models of cheap turntables.

But the rest of the DJs prefer Technics turntables with conventional pivoted tonearm. So manufacturers like Stanton, Vestax tried to make something different to say "this is better". Just marketing in competition with Technics for specific segment (battle/scratch djs) on the professional market.