How to.. head alignment

On the dcc170 I noticed that dropouts oftentimes reduced when the unit was upside down. After inspection I found that the head-bridge screwes were not tight. After retighten it the problem went away.
I can understand that after a lot of years using a portable device that the alignment goes bad. But what about the stationary recorders? Do they suffer? And how many faults are the cause of this? And how can you readjust this?

The stationary recorders normally do not have this problem as most alignment screws are sealed (at least all of the 1st gen.
I have only seen this problem if someone breaks the seal with stationary recorders.

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I’ve also seen it often on stationary recorders touched by the previous owner. The azimuth adjustment doesn’t differs from that of analog tape recorders. It requires an analog azimuth test tape with high frequency from 8 to 10 kHz and recorded at level of -20db to -6db. The adjustment performed either by monitoring maximum signal amplitude on both L/R channels on a TRMS voltmeter or minimum signal phase shift between L and R channels on a two-channel oscilloscope.

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