Ditching anti-skate?


Had some issues with the anti-skate settings on my Clearaudio TT. No matter how the weight was adjusted, the arm was always swinging back to the periphery of the record when I used the arm riser. So, I asked my dealer, who sent me to his distributor....what he said surprised me. Basically, he said that anti-skate is useless. A myth propogated by customers feeling that no anti-skate adjustment will make customers thing that the design is "incomplete." He says that anti-skate actually causes the stylus to "wobble" in the grooves, increasing wear to both record and stylus, as well as robbing the TT of bass, since most of the bass in records is at the bottom of the grooves. So, I bagged the anti-skate completely. Right or wrong?
afc

Showing 1 response by geoch

C'mon you guys,
We are in analogue domain here!!
Don't expect to just push a button of your remote and enjoy the analogue heaven. The antiskate force is a very easy & standard procedure that is as necessary as the VTA and even more so, because once you find the right value, you don't have the choise for experiment other settings.
It's so obviously THE RIGHT VALUE !!!
(of course for the given groovy track of the test record).
Don't say please that you don't have a test LP.
The sad truth is that only few arms can provide a gradualy increasing force across the LP.
In that situation I would choose to buy the arm that povides ALL the alignments. (and azimuth too!!!)
George