If a rim is more true out of the box, is that what makes it possible to get uniform spoke tension, or does it just make it easier to get uniform spoke tension? It was my understanding that it is the latter. I have two pairs of wheels with Alex rims (which came OEM on bikes) that I completely detensioned and retensioned to try to make the wheels have correct and uniform spoke tension. All four wheels went way out of true when they were detensioned, but after a lot of fiddling I got them back to true with the right degree of fairly uniform tension (within +/- one unit on the Park gauge). I'm not saying I'm good at this, as it basically took forever and I was fairly frustrated. However, this experience leads me to believe that someone who knows what they're doing could build a pretty good wheel with an Alex rim.