Does removing anti-skating really improve sound?


I know this topic has been discussed here before, but wanted to see if others have the same experience as me. After removing the fishing line dangling weight from my tonearm I’m convinced my bass and soundstage has opened up. I doing very careful listening with headphones and don’t hear any distortion or treble harshness. So why use anti-skating at all? Even during deep bass/ loud passages no skipping of tracks. Any thoughts from all the analog gurus out there?
tubelvr1

Showing 1 response by whart

I use a linear tracker (Kuzma Airline) and the fine horizontal balancing set up involves bouncing the arm while it is in its 'up' cueing position at different points along the face of a record to see which way the arm drifts-- the objective, if I recall the instructions correctly (and I re-read them when I do this setting) is drift slightly outward at rim of record, neutral at center of record and slightly inward an inner grooves. This is supposed to be more exact than any level or measure and in fact that has proven true. So the arm is level, but....
I haven't used a conventional arm for a dozen years but am adding one- it's en route to me now, and it has an anti-skate device. So, I will be doing his setting for the first time in a long time.
Riddle me this- using a test record, are you checking for anti-skate at more than one place on the record? If not, why not? (Not a trick question and no hidden agenda other than my curiosity and fairly long lack of hands on experience in messing with an anti-skate setting).