Anti skate. I think something's wrong

Dear Stringreen,

Sorry for misunderstanding you earlier although I did realise that you were also referring to the "source" of the applied A/S force as per Doug Deacon’s frequent eloquence on the subject.

DougDeacon, the principal advocate of the “no-antiskate philosophy” doesn’t appear to be here to speak for himself but what you refer to is the “benefit” of removing an undesirably influential force (i.e. A/S) applied at the “wrong” end of the tonearm such that the cartridge’s suspension is unnecessarily stressed or tensioned by it, and that removal of this force is preferable to the disadvantage of not having skating compensation at all.

This type of “sacrificial” purist approach to LP replay is not new and we see many examples of it in turntable design e.g. designers such as Willie Bauer eschewing more expensive Rega tonearm’s in favour of the cheaper RB250 because it didn’t contain spring-based mechanisms for A/S etc on the grounds that he could hear the negative influence of the springs in dynamically balanced arms. Another example is the adoption of the 3-point fixing by some companies (e.g. Naim) which disregards the “necessity” of alignment flexibility & accuracy in favour of secure fixing on an appropriately equipped tonearm.

Unfortunately, I see this "zero-antiskate" approach as flawed because anti-skate is not the only way that a cartridge’s suspension can be stressed…

One example is that if an LP is drilled off centre (nearly all LPs are), the cart will be forced to ride from side-to-side instead of simply tracing the normal “regular” path of the groove. I would imagine that this sets up forces in the groove which are just as troublesome, in absolute terms, as anti-skate.

It is important to note that cartridges are actually designed to handle these forces.

Under these conditions, if one could “zoom” down to microscopic level and ask the cartridge how it is faring it would probably tell you that there’s not much difference between this and skating force, that it’s "all in a day’s work" for your average phono cartridge.

Second-guessing what DD might say, he would probably argue that LP mis-drilling “forces” are oriented at the “correct” (stylus) end of the tonearm and that the cantilever would be intrinsically less stressed than by A/S.

Not sure I’d agree with that one either because it doesn’t consider inertia. If anything I’d say it’s worse because it is causing periodic de-stabilisation but that’s the reason cartridges have suspensions.

However, variety is the spice of life and if you are happy working without anti-skate then that’s all that matters. It’s an individual choice and we’re not here to press-gang you into accepting conventional methods.

Happy listening ;^)

Stringreen, have you given thought that your take on anti-skate might apply more to uni-pivots than to gimbaled tonearms?

It's been awhile since I adjusted AS, but maybe(and this is done with a gimbaled tonearm) my final result, which was just less than where the sound becomes locked in(in a way-maybe where everything, like channel balance, seems to be correct), has to do a little bit with the "opening of sound" he talks about.  i do remember sleeping on what appeared to be the correct setting(based on channel balance, etc.) and was less enthused about listening to music.  When I put it back(remember these changes to AS were almost imperceptible movements), the magic came back. 

Blueranger, I think you are correct about checking the level of your turntable.  I think that's most likely the problem, when you have a quality arm, yet have to put AS at it's maximum.

Peter Lederman probably has forgotten more about vinyl set-up than I will ever know, but I do have to disagree with him on one small point; the genesis of the skating force begins with the fact that 95% of tonearms are mounted so as to have the stylus overhang the spindle (by, typically ~15mm).  This is done to obtain two points on the surface of the LP where the tracking error can be null, but the trade-off is that (without also introducing headshell offset angle) the cantilever can never be parallel to the groove.  This is proven by the Pythagorean theorem, where the tonearm is side A of a right angle triangle, the radius of the LP from stylus to spindle is side B, and the P2S distance is side C.  Because you start out with a situation where A>C, due to overhang, then the Pythagorean theorem that governs the size relationships of a right-angle triangle can never be met (C-squared = A-squared + B-squared). Headshell offset angle, in conjunction with overhang, allows for two points on the LP surface where the cantilever IS parallel to the groove, but some skating force is present even then, because of headshell offset angle.  Those two null points for tracking error are the only points where ALL the skating force is due to headshell offset angle. Otherwise, it's both overhang and headshell offset that cause skating.