Harry Weisfeld Was Right All Along


I'll admit that I was skeptical when I heard Harry Weisfeld of VPI say that his JMW tonearm sounded better without any antiskating device a few years ago. All the arguments for antiskating compensation seemed plausible if not undeniable.

But today, I've seen the light. I own a Michell Orbe SE with a Wilson Benesch Act 0.5 arm and a Shelter 501 II cartridge. I dialed everything in, but still had the compunction to fiddle around with something so I removed the funky anti-skate weight from the WB. Not only does the arm behave much better (no annoying, backswing when indexing), but it actually sounds better to my ears. Smoother, more dynamic, less etched/more natural are the changes I hear. I wonder how many other arm/cartridge combinations would benefit from eschewing their anti-skate mechanisms.

While I originally thought that Harry Weisfeld was simply making excuses, in reality, he was probably just being honest. I'm sure the twisty-wire approach he now uses is a good way to implement anti-skating for those who must have it.
plato

Showing 2 responses by tbg

Quincy, I think your problem may be azimuth not anti-skating. I am not sure whether you can change this in the SME.
I have always wonder about setting anti-skate. Typically, I ignored instructions and merely put a blank record on a dropped the needle and adjusted accordingly. But for some time I had the Shindo turntable with it updated Ortofon tonearm which never had an anti-skating adjustment.

You have no concerns with anti-skating with linear arms, but they should be perfectly level and move neither way.