The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

The infamous Joseph W. Jones strikes again!

Why did tangential tracking not catch on back then, or maybe a better question would be why did manufacturers not care about good tracking?
My various gramophones have/had tracking errors approaching 20 degrees at the worst points of the tonearm swing. I endeavour to correct these when possible.
Designing a tonearm that tracks well is not all that difficult and would cost little, if any, more than a poorly executed design.

Aha! That's the eternal problem of many many beautiful machines, which I cannot suffer, because of that you've said... It was so easy from the beginning to have designed it well....! They only would have needed to pay attention to that! But this is story, and cannot change.
Even the hmv 101 and 102 have bad, and terrible, respectively, track alignments. Hmv did a good work with the grand machines, though.
And the beautiful Columbia 113a? Brother to the US Columbia 161 and 163, although these had different tonearms than their UK brothers. Such a beauty with that terrible alignment... I cannot suffer it... It's so easy to correct giving a certain collection angle to the soundbox... But...!