Originally Posted by
cyccommute
..I'll bet you dollars to donuts .. that his spokes are laced asymmetrically.
The rim doesn't care much about where the spokes are anchored at that stage - unless he's bringing some spokes to tension way before the others by giving all nipples equal turns and a flawed lace pattern has left him with some spokes effectively shorter than the others. But lacing with wrong spoke lengths like that usually only means that the wheel goes out of true. To get (residual) tacoing you've got to have overtension or an outer force.
Originally Posted by
cyccommute
....Trailing and leading spokes should have the heads pointing at one another for each side.
How would you get that to work? Spoke holes are "always" offsetfrom one flange to the other. Go through any spoke hole parallell with the axle and you end up smack in the middle between two spoke holes on the other side. Either they're always facign each other or they're never facing each other, for any X pattern.