Airds:
Your advice is well-received. I was actually wondering about the flare issue myself, after I received the J-12, and I sort of wondered if the deeply-recessed front element wouldn't give me an extra margin of safety. Apparently, like you suggest, not in all conditions.
At any rate, I have one of Heavystar's 40.5mm vented shades (for my Industar-61 L/D), and mounted it just for fun. The lines of sight seem to work out fine, which is very nice, considering that this hood (I think) is optimized for a 50mm FOV. Correct me if I'm wrong about that.
But here's the interesting bit: the mounted hood makes it a breeze to change aperture, almost especially since the J-12 has no click-stops (low turning resistance). It's like an aperture ring extension, and it JUST clears the end of travel for the helicoid as the lens racks in. Wow. Yeah, you'll have to peer down into the lens to SEE the f-stop setting, but really, what's the big deal? It's better than the fiddly thumb-forefinger method you'd use otherwise.
But it does ruin the lines, somewhat. At least, in my opinion.
I actually have another identical vented shade coming, from *bay user americaneagle_camera. Heavystar hadn't had any in his inventory for a while, and I seem to be splitting at the seams with FSU LTM lenses. We'll see.
My impression (helped along by info from the likes of xayraa33 and AndersG, among others), is that the only J-12s one must really beware are the early batches, especially the ones before 1957 or so. I've heard good things about the '57s, so I'm only assuming that the later ones also fall into line. I think that the manufacturing lines changed facilities somewhere in this time period, so perhaps the packaging of the rear lens group changed somewhat. Of course, this says nothing about the variabilities within the batches.
Can you tell that I'm at work again, longing to go home and shoot around? Of course you can.
-joe.