Ok vinyl gurus, don't mean to hijack this thread but just want to ask a quick question about an issue I've got that's made me stop listening to my TT.

Got a second hand Technics a few years ago, and the stylus was shot so ordered an AT one from Amazon, couple of hundred bucks. Since then I've always had a channel imbalance which I suspect is due to a fault in the stylus itself - I've swapped stylus, swapped LR, swapped preamps, etc. I've tried realigning the stylus to no end with no improvement (as that's what my googling turns up as the main fix to the problem).

Are there any other checks I can do? I'm thinking of doing a resistance check from RCAs to headshell pins (loose internal wiring maybe?). Or should I just bite the bullet and get another stylus, sigh...

My money is on the wiring or more specifically the solder joints between the arm and the RCA's out the back.  Replacing is usually not that hard, you maybe even just need a reflow.  Depending on the Technics model it may be attached to a PCB.  You can look at KAB USA for genuine parts.  Best to have a friend or a shop provide a donor technics table to slap your headshell and cart onto to provide a peace of mind about your modern cart.  These old tables are old after all.

If it makes you feel any better about the madness of alignment methods, based on what I understand any alignment method has a margin of tracking error and only a single point at which tracking is perfect so no method is ever truly going to be perfect; even if you are not properly aligned to any of the methods.