Anti-Skate

That isn’t surprising, except that I would have expected that you would have had to reduce anti-skating force, not increase it, to correct for cantilever deflection toward the center of the record. (Although you subsequently referred to deflection to the right, which I presume means toward the outer edge of the record, which would indeed necessitate increasing anti-skating force).

In a number of past threads I’ve recommended the following procedure for setting anti-skating, at least in the case of cartridges having medium to high compliance (your Delos being in the medium compliance category). The procedure may not be practical for low compliance cartridges since the cantilever will deflect less readily:

1) Observe the cartridge from the front while it is in the groove of a low volume passage of a rotating record, and positioned somewhere in the middle of the record.

2) Adjust anti-skating until deflection of the cantilever to one side (left or right) becomes barely perceptible, relative to its position when the stylus is lifted off of the record. Note the setting.

3) Adjust anti-skating until deflection of the cantilever to the other side (left or right) becomes barely perceptible, relative to its position when the stylus is lifted off of the record. Note the setting.

4) Set anti-skating to the mid-point between those settings.

5) Verify that no perceptible left or right deflection of the cantilever occurs near the beginning and near the end of the record.

I’ve usually found that the resulting setting requires little or no subsequent fine tuning by ear, and that the resulting anti-skating force usually corresponds to about 50% to 60% of VTF.

Enjoy! Regards,
-- Al

edcyn, If the cantilever was angled towards the center of the record it means you had too much anti skate compensation applied. The best way to adjust anti skate is with a test record like the Hi Fi News Test Record.
It has tracks specifically for adjusting anti skate. Any other way is simply guessing. The record has instructions on how to use these tracks. With the anti skate set up correctly the Delos will track better. This will lead to less distortion on heavily modulated tracks.

almarg -- I essentially did what you suggested no matter how verkochte my reasoning might have been. mijostyn -- I don’t think the cartridge ever mistracked for me, in any case. And I know what mistracking is, having spent plenty of days with a Denon 103 S on a mismatched, mediocre tonearm.

Like I said edcyn, it will track better. Better than it is now. Whatever now is. Your Denon was an extreme case.

OP:

when I play a record the cantilever would angle slightly toward the record’s center.

OP (same one!):

Lo and behold, the cantilever no longer shifts right.

So which was it? Was it shifted toward the records center- ie to the left- or was it shifted to the right- away from center???