How To Control The Eager Beaver

Larry, That is an interesting idea, but I don't get it. The force applied to the stylus/cantilever would be to counter the force of friction between stylus and groove, and here, with a tangential arm, we have a cantilever that is always tangent to the groove across the entire LP. So the friction force would only vary according to groove tortuosity, ideally.  The carriage end that holds on to the arm wand has the same job as the pivot bearing does in a conventional pivoted overhung tonearm, to resist friction or stylus drag. For much of the time (except for two moments when the stylus passes through the two null points on the surface of an LP, if your pivoted tonearm is set up properly), with a conventional arm, the cantilever is not tangent to the groove, which imparts a side force on the cantilever. I would think that's "worse" than with a tangential arm.

Properly designed tonearms that have zero headshell offset also underhang the pivot. That's a huge distinction from tonearms with an offset headshell that overhang the pivot. In order to minimize TAE, Lofgren, Bearwald, Stevenson, et al, introduced the overhung tonearm and headshell offset, regardless of the effect on skating force. You are correct that the resulting high TAE of an underhung straight tonearm does not result in audible distortion. But you say it doesn't hurt performance "much".  I'd say it does not hurt performance at all, and in fact there is much to be said about the at least equally excellent performance of underhung tonearms with zero offset. (And I've said it elsewhere so won't bore you with my rationale.)

No, you are correct, RB, there should be no skating force with a tangential tracker.  The only side force would be to overcome any friction in the carriage, and there is always some of that, which is why the best LT tonearms in my opinion float the carriage on an air bearing.

And you've answered the question.  Warps throw the balance of skating force vs AS out of whack, momentarily. I'd never thought to worry about that, so I won't start now.

My only thought is that "just fine" is not quantitative.  Most of us would say the same for our pivoted tonearms.  Anyway, you raise an interesting question: what difference does it make tracking warps with a pivoted vs a tangential tonearm? Why would skating force and the application of AS make any difference?  Answer for me is I don't know.

Have fun with that. The precise proper amount of AS will be different for different LPs and certainly even for different musical passages on any single LP. So, when you set it for Friday Night at SF, it may be correct for parts of that particular LP. Since the skating force varies with the composition of the vinyl and the complexity of the musical passage and with tracking angle error (TAE) and zenith error, not to mention with VTF and stylus shape, and since the magnitude of TAE varies in a somewhat predictable manner across the LP surface, the best one can hope for is to be precisely correct at two points on the LP surface, because the changes in TAE magnitude with respect to the distance from outer to inner grooves roughly describes a parabola, any constant amount of AS will at best intersect a parabola at two moments during play.

Elliot, you meant to say that skating (not “antiskate”) occurs even on blank vinyl, but the magnitude and even the vector direction of the skating force are different when the stylus is tracing a groove. Nevertheless some do set AS using a blank area on an LP. But try as one might there is no single setting of AS that will precisely counter the skating force across the playing surface of an LP. Experience for me and many others is just to set AS at some low value (some say ~10% of VTF, but how do you quantify AS force?) and hope for the best. I still maintain that skating force is not causing the OP’s stylus to skip, at least not skating alone.

I agree with Larry in that I think the stylus is sliding on the raised lip. That plus too low a setting of VTF could result in the observed problem. But I would also point out that the skating force does pull the stylus inward toward the label, so too much AS (which pulls in the opposite direction) would not be expected to be the cause of this problem. Maybe try increasing VTF by just a hair so as not to exceed the recommended max? And see that that does.

However, the skating force alone is usually not sufficient in magnitude to account for the observation, unless the tonearm is wildly misaligned. Think of it, zero anti-skate, which results in unopposed skating force, all other things being properly adjusted, does not cause the stylus to skip outer grooves per se. Moreover, the skating force is not maximal at the outermost grooves.