Brand new Lyra Delos - skewed cantilever

Forgot to mention that I focused on friction, because friction is the root cause of skating, for the few who don't already know.

@lewm  when I am discussing the new Lyra cartridges with the new angle technology designs, set up is ultra critical. Get it even the slightest bit incorrect and the performance suffers. This really is not the case with the typical MM cartridge, which is perhaps where we would agree. I am not aware of any MM cartridge that employs the new angle technology…

Thanks a lot everyone for chiming in.

I reset tonearm angle (SME IV), made sure that the arm was parallel to the record surface, and the rest. I also reset azimuth which was a bit off, but that is the difficult thing with the SME.

No record has skipped since then, but I am going to go through my collection before trying the two faulty records again.

@lewm is correct. Any cartridge including the Lyra can be out a bit and most if not all of us would not notice it. I think the major determinant of how import proper set up is is the type of stylus. The effect of the set up being off would be loss of very high frequencies and smearing of the image. 

@anthos314, maybe it is just the records?

Mijo and davey, Just to be clear, I am not claiming that set-up is not important. I am just saying that the gross malfunctions experienced by the OP would usually not be due to small errors in geometry, regardless of the stylus shape.  Also, I forgot to mention groove tortuosity as another factor that affects the magnitude of the skating force, but that doesn't matter here.  I really think something is hanging up the tonearm, maybe the wiring, if not also a pivot bearing problem.  Sometimes these issues are easy to hear but hard to find.