Well I guess I'm in the habit of aligning my cartridges and turntables with precision. This is actually vital for all turntables. I do know some, probably quite a lot actually, do not allow for all the precise adjustments required, especially azimuth alignment. I suppose with an elliptical stylus misaligned then abnormal wear and therefore what is essentially damage to the stylus, might improve performance. In other words the errors might conceivably cancel each other. I doubt you would get that lucky though.
The Shure article is all to do with scratch DJs, who are professional abusers of turntables and cartridges.
I will say this, that in this plug and play era, I think people new to turntables run into problems. I think they do not always make sensible equipment choices. Even more importantly they do not realize the importance of critical adjustments and how to perform them. Setting up a turntable properly is a definite skill set and has to be properly taught and learned. I can tell you one thing, that now I'm in my geriatric era of life it is not so easy any more. Setting up my four turntables after our recent move, seemed to be much harder than it used to be!
In closing I can not emphasize how far removed is the purchase, and putting into service, a turntable is from a digital disc player. It is a completely different ball game. Doing it carefully and properly makes all the difference between good and poor sound, and this is not a subtle difference. I have a strong suspicion that many, if not most, turntables are relatively poor performers due to not enough attention to detail in set up.
