Graham Phantom Anti-Skate. Is it effective at all?

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Stringreen, and Doug

A/S is included with tonearms as a selling point....when skating became the new adjustment of perfection, it was hard to sell an arm without it. In truth, A/S is very illusive...there are so many factors that contribute to it that there is just no way to adjust so that it does what intended. Most arms, when set according to directions apply WAY too much a/s . The constant outward deflection of the arm...when not needed...especially with too high a setting, exerts a force that inhibits the stylus and produces a side damping. One wants the stylus to be absolutely free to negotiate its travels.

It is not the case that antiskate is some sort of sales thing . As mentioned above there is good reason that for half a century or more probably more than 99.9% of arms had and still have it. Antiskate is provided to compensate for skating forces. You adjust it to equalise distortion on each channel. If you run an arm without it then by definition one channel must have more tracking force than the other. End of story.

Unless, of course, your arm is providing a force by some other means, eg inadvertently through using heavy wire through the bearing, such as Cardas, or twisting the wire deliberately, such as VPI or AR, or being off level, or having stiff bearings.

And, of course, it is cheaper to make an arm without the facility.

With no antiskate there are force acting to pull the arm inwards. If you complain about the effects of the outward force applied using antiskate, but to where does the inward force magically disappear when not using it? None of the anti skate advocates have addressed this, nor why the unequal forces mysteriously don't cause distortion.

There must be compensation with extra downforce (all things being equal), to increase the VTF on the right channel.

All this is not to say that all antiskate methods are perfect. Their physical presence may well affect the sound.

And of course the arms on which they are used may suffer from the above mentioned wiring and other issues, so rendering the mechanism redundant.

John

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But If it all sounds ok because fair enough.

Doug:
I don't expect you to defend Stringreen. I addressed you and him as you were both in the no- antiskate camp, and you had agreed with his point.

You said

Skating forces put an inward bias on the stylus. The stylus wants to skate inward but is constrained by the inner groovewall.

This is incorrect. It is the arm that pivots inwards because of the resultant force produced by stylus friction in the direction tangent to the groove and the restraining force in the direction of the arm pivot. The stylus, on the other hand, is actually being pushed upwards and outwards against the compliance of the suspension as the cantilever pivot moves inwards.

However, so long as steady contact is maintained with both groovewalls, no distortion will occur. If the stylus traces the grooves accurately, it will reproduce accurately (for its part).

As the stylus is pushed up the 45 degree slope of the groove, the VTF on the opposite face decreases.
Applying antiskate pulls the arm (and therefore the cantilever pivot) outwards thus equalising the VTF on both channels. The inward and outward forces are then equal at both the stylus and the cantilever pivot, as they are joined by the cantilever, and the plane of movement of the cantilever is therefore vertical. If there is no antiskate (intentional, or otherwise via wiring) then the forces must be unequal, and with enough VTF, while the stylus may track correctly without the distortion due to low VTF on the right channel, that channel will have appreciably more tracking force than the left. And any alteration of VTF will still vary downforce disproportionately.

Arms are designed to have a mechanism to allow some form of compensation for skating force, as the force cannot be wished away. It is what designers do. It is good basic arm design, like having variable VTF. It is for designers who don't wish to include it to try to explain their decision.

Whether is is well implemented, or compromised by wiring torque, or the user wishes to use it, is another matter.

Stringreen:

In my previous post the last sentence was wrong - it was a typo.

To the OP, Mulveling:

If all set up parameters are correct, and an arm cannot supply sufficient antiskate to eliminate right channel distortion, then there may be stiffness in the bearing (not usually the case with unipivots) or drag in the internal wiring.

John

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