Tonearms without anti-skate, damage to records?

And you have just proved, Elliott, why we should all be glad you are staying around!

There was a recent and rather long thread about a tonearm with no headshell angle, and designed to be mounted with underhang, rather than overhang. The designer was of the opinion that the resulting tracking errors were a lesser evil than the use of anti-skate. Needless to say, it generated much heat and little light.

Has anyone performed Peter Ledermann's recommended AS method (set to permit slow centripetal progress on smooth vinyl) and compared the resulting AS force to standard recommendations? My experience with doing it on two or three cartridges is that it comes out to about half of the VTF (though how much VTF affects skating force on smooth vinyl isn't obvious to me: presumably VTF acts through force on angled groove walls).

One thing I am pretty sure of is that Decca cartridges sound their best with little to no AS set, which perhaps isn't surprising as their armature, triangular in shape in the horizontal plane, is relatively resistant to sideways movement. That's probably something I should explore further in a Decca forum.

True, all I can do is twiddle the dial as made and calibrated by SME, or the slider in the case of Rega. I use two arms from each, and setting them up this way conforms to PL’s method.

Going by sound alone, I’d say that this setting or even less is the best. It’s a night and day difference for the Decca, which comes to life with little or no AS force. But as always, I’m judging on sound quality alone, as having but one ear, I don’t do stereo, imaging, soundstaging and other (to me) imaginary concepts.