In reply to C Witter:
It's funny, I had the original HB alloy offsets and for some reason I sold them and replaced them with Metolius curve nuts, I think on the strength of their Astronuts which IMHO are the single best small wire on the market. But rhe curves weren't as good and I really missed the HBs but by that point Hugh was gone and they folded, with ISC and Denny Moorhouse taking the Bangor site and selling/passing on rhe design to DMM. I got some and climbed with them for years, and they made changes which I felt made them inferior to the originals. They were less blocky and more smoothly finished, and whilst up to the red is good, I barely use Dark grey upwards. Funny though as maybe the WC shape for me is closer in some ways to the originals? But I've not thought about that before... perception maybe? We're getting down to a pretty detailed level here!
That said, having compared end to end a DMM offset with a SL rock, I think the SL has maybe 2 degrees less flare than the DMM, so maybe there's something in what you say? It's pretty subtle but it's there.
All this said, I feel the offsets of any variety are vastly superior to the end placements of a standard nut, whose surface area ratio is IMO the wrong way round, ie small for a less secure placement. I hardly ever placed them like that, especially the old DMM forged walnuts.