yea I hear ya, alignment just leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.
I decided to mess with IF alignmnent on my last B&W. Of course I had no equipment so I attempted to do it by ear and eye (
)... anyway the plan was just to turn each lug just a bit and keep up with what I had done. That plan fell apart pretty quick, then one of the coil forms broke apart....
I ended up making a new form thread so the slug would tune. Then I got a B&k 415 sweep gen with markers (very nice). I started by confirming the marker freq with a freq counter. Lots of hookup cables and trial and error attempts I was finally able to get the right shape and markers in the right place.
I think it just take a lot of practice to get it right, and to know when ot stop.
The Biggest problem I think it the fragile cores, that being said I completely understand your wanting to do it
You just want to be absolultly sure its really the problem. Of course the best way to know that is to get your equipment working properly and then go ahead and sweeep the circuits, if the bandpass looks right then dont touch a thing, least something breaks and set you back, 1st do no harm.
In the end my B&W problem turned out to be a keyed agc with an open cap letting horz freq pulses get thru. The agc voltage was correct per the DMM but when you looked at the scope you could see it plain as day.
For your marker gen I would suggest you get a freq counter and check it out.