I could very well be corrected here, but my understanding of 'end of side distortion' is to do with the arc that the cartridge follows when on a pivoted arm, whereby the stylus can at some point be at a less than ideal angle to the groove. Apparently this effect is lessened when using a 12" arm, but I recently read somewhere that other undesirable things can happen with those arms. I imagine linear trackers overcome the issues.

Another concern is the cost of cartridges/styli. My current cartridge set me back about £300 or so, and that's as much as I'm prepared to spend. The thought that using a £1000 cart might mean that playing records could cost about 50p per side is a worry I don't want to take on.

Is vinyl worth all the faff? Probably not. But it's what I grew up with, and I won't be abandoning the format completely. Even though most of my music purchases these days is CD.

I really can't argue with Macca's logic - he might have spent big on his CD transport, but it's not much more than a couple of decent MC carts.