JR said I can post this. He's to busy at the moment to jump on himself.
I have found no evidence that there is a direct relationship between price paid for a cartridge and meeting design specifications either of the cartridge manufacturer or their vendors. In fact, because the higher priced models take greater risks with respect to the severity of their stylus profiles, it could be argued that tolerances get even worse as you pay more. For example, a conical stylus does not exhibit any zenith error or SRA error whatsoever because it does not have a defined contact minor radius.
There are some manufacturers that get some of the specs better than others, but none that I know of are getting all of them consistently hit