Is my anti-skating too strong.

@lewm , I am not arguing about the coefficient of friction. That would be silly. However, play a blank record then have a look at it under the light. Then talk to me. If you do not have a blank record The Lumineers Cleopatra has a blank third side. 

Sheesh, amazing how much uninformed BS in this thread!  I won't even dignify some of the posts with a response.  But I will advise readers to look elsewhere for information on antiskating, its causes, and remediation.

@sktn77a , please, inform us! What is BS and what is not? 

Yeah, please do enlighten the rest of us.  I am sure that anyone with a moniker that incorporates the word "skating", sans vowels and a "g", is expert.

@lewm , all bark, no bite it seems.

@jjss49   Thank you for posting the link to Peter's videos on AS. He seems like a really great guy and I think he did a great job with the videos.  I certainly am not an expert on this topic but what he was saying seems to make sense to me.

A question for all.... I had read on another thread that a person was experiencing distortion in highly modulated grooves towards the very end of the record.  I am wondering if that is a result of not enough Antiskating, or is it possibly just groove damage, or a misalignment of sorts?  He said it doesn't happen all the time but only on highly dynamic and modulated passages near the end of the record.  The rest of the record was fine.

Any thoughts on that?

Inner grooves are the hardest part of the record for a cartridge to track because the groove modulations (wiggles) are compressed into a smaller diameter and become more extreme in shape.  Wrong antiskating can contribute to problems with tracking, so in that sense you could say they "cause" the problem.  When grooves are highly modulated more skating force is developed, and therefore, more antiskating would be desirable.  But, as Peter Ledermann points out, increasing antiskating to optimize high modulation playing would mean that, for the vast majority of the time (when modulation levels are lower), antiskating is set too high.  That is why he discourages using test records to set antiskating for equal distortion in both channels at high modulation levels.

@no_regrets, if the anti skating is off the distortion will occur in one channel or the other. If it is set too low the right channel will distort, too high and the left channel will distort. Having said this orchestral crescendos always occur at the end where the modulation is tightly packed and tracking error and it's significance increases fast. If the cartridge is not positioned correctly you can get distortion here. The cartridge may just be miss tracking because it is a poor performer or worn. It could be the record is damaged from play with a worn stylus. 

Can someone please confirm or correct my thinking.  If I occasionally hear distortion in the left channel on peaks, my anti-skate is set too high (too much force to the outside of the record).  I need to decrease the anti-skate to allow more force in the inside of the groove.  Is this correct?  I currently have it set to the same level as my tracking force.  Thank you.

Im with Ozzie on this one.  I track my Ortofon a hair heavier just for security, but it sounds better without a/s to me.

Tswisla

look at the second post that MC wrote and you will have your answer.