How To Control The Eager Beaver

Not enough anti-skate, it is pulling in as soon as it hits the surface, it takes a few grooves just to keep it in a groove, and it is pulling in too much the entire play, of EVERY LP, wearing both the stylus and the grooves.

are you able to adjust anti-skate on that unit?

You cannot rely on the dials/indicators being accurate, you can set it visually.

Get one of these protractor discs with ’other side blank’.

hudson hifi protractor, other side blank

after you double-check all your alignments on the protractor side, set anti-skate to zero, set your tracking weight

now, on the disc’s blank side, manually spin the platter, lower the arm, see it pull in even though no grooves, that is the natural force any and all pivoted arms exhibit.

adjust the anti-skate slowly while seeing the results, check in a little from the outer edge, check out a little bit from the inner edge, make the best compromise.

rather, inward skate, inward pull, happens naturally for any pivoted arm, on any smooth surface, no groove needed to make/see it happen.

anti-skate, which we apply, counters the natural force

you want your stylus ’floating’, so it drops down into the groove and reacts equally to input from either side of the groove as well as up and down. getting the most of advanced stylus, further down in the groove, depends on proper countering of the naturally occurring inward skate.

preventing an advanced stylus from damaging grooves, from uneven wear of itself, to get the 'potential' longer life, based on straight and proper even l/r surface contact

absolutely no groove needed, anti-skate happens 'naturally' on a blank sided disc,

that is why you can see the effect increase/lessen as you add/reduce anti-skate force using the blank side of hudson hifi's, any other single sided discs (don't get the version with strobe on the other side)

protractor one side, other side blank

you can make a quickie overhang/null points protractor if you can punch/drill/cut a hole in a piece of stiff paper to fit onto a spindle, then simply draw a line across the center of the hole, and make some marks where you want them.

overhang is easy, centerline of spindle to centerline of stylus tip,

do not tighten, loosely snug, because you may be twisting the cartridge body sideways in the headshell a bit to get the best 'straight to the lines' for the 2 null points, then tighten speck by speck, re-check when tight, avoid movement when tightening

lewm,

you are correct, see my correction above

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I use the sound/imaging of these 3 guitar players to refine anti-skate by ear

Friday Night in San Francisco, get both CD and LP

all 3 ONLY Play on the last 2 tracks, listen to the audience imaging also

1st, you need the CD version, become familiar with the last two tracks, hear it with no involvement of a Turntable’s right or wrong setup

2nd, LP, side two, last two tracks, everything else correct: help refine final anti-skate adjustment