Do 45 RPM records need higher anti-skate setting?

I have a device which can show the actual side-forces imposed on the cantilever. Although the instantaneous side-forces are affected by groove drag (and therefore groove modulation), it appears to me that the general side-forces experienced by the cantilever follow the tracking distortion curve.

hth

45s are NOT cut with greater modulation (if they were the sound would be louder through the speakers), the goal of the mastering guys is same volume, so the idea that different anti-skate is required is far fetched. Same anti-skate.

I have quite a few 45s that are obviously cut at higher levels. IOW, they play louder. Also, when we cut at 45 on our lathe (I run an LP mastering operation, FWIW) we find that we can cut certain frequencies at higher levels easier than 33. I think where you are having a problem is the assumption that the 'mastering guys' are going for the 'same volume'. We might and we might not. Usually we cut with two goals:

1) see if we can get it all on the side and
2) don't over cut such that the stylus gets knocked out of the groove or the cut goes over the previous adjacent groove.

Its pretty well impossible to overload the cutter system- the main limit is cutting a groove that a cartridge can track without distortion. A lot depends on the signal that is being recorded and they are not all the same else the planet would be a boring place :)

So if friction due to modulation is indeed a factor in skating forces, it would be a mistake to assume that it will be a constant- IOW it is indeed a variable.

While all these discussions are interesting, can you see if one of these ideas or thoughts are incorrect, or are left out, your conclusions will be wrong-sometimes incredibly so.  Lost in all this is how I actually set my anti-skate, and it didn't have to do with the beginning of a record.  It had to do with the end of the record-which turned out to be a compromise.  I could not use the setting that made the end of the record sound its best(I had to use a slightly lower skating force than that, in order to get the best sound over the entire record.).  Some assumptions(that cartridge manufacturers had arrived at recommended levels of anti-skate for their cartridge correctly, and that the anti-skate gauge was correct[or I read, from real life experiences, that it wasn't.].  See omsed's remark about lawyers and doctors.) had to be made by me.  Because so many people on Audiogon disagreed with cartridge manufacturers' anti-skate recommendations, I postulated(with some research on what arms these people were using) that anti-skate settings for unipivot tonearms might be different from the manufacturers' recommendations(which may have been based on gimballed tonearms).