Does removing anti-skating really improve sound?

@tubelvr1, my experience dovetails yours. No AS results in a more open sound. By contrast, AS brings greater focus and more stable L to R image. It also enhances the bass somewhat. Pick your poison. The thread in your arm will also dampen its movement and resonances. Over the years I have run my tonearms (VPI, Sumiko The Arm, Grace 840FB, Lustre GST 801) without AS, without harm to my styli or records. Note that these tonearms have different AS mechanism, yet the result was the same. YMMV.

This is mistaken. While stylus shape can influence skating force, the actual cause of the force is the pickup arm offset. That's why true linear tracking arms have no skating force. There are also a few pivoted arms that have no offset; they also have no skating force.

As a matter of fact cleeds this is mistaken. Tangential tracking arms have no skating force because they are tangential. They have zero overhang.

Your true linear tracking arm will skate the minute you set it up with overhang. 

I use Peter Ledermann's method for setting antiskating and don't worry about it. Seems to work just fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYNv-gVDYjM

tubelvr1:

Thank you millercarbon for the detailed explanation. Does anti skating affect loudness of a channel also? I believe after removing the weight my right channel sounds equal to the left whereas before it was slightly louder.

Read back through my first post and recall the right channel is to your right as you look at the record, and this is the direction anti-skate is pulling the arm, putting more pressure on the right. 

Now at this point it helps to think about exactly how this whole thing works. 

Down at the business end the groove is pushing the stylus left and right and up and down, which makes the other end of the cantilever move just the opposite. At the end of the cantilever is either a magnet (in moving magnet cartridges) or a coil (in moving coils) either way it doesn't matter. What does matter is that the coil (or magnet) be centered where the cartridge designer wants it to be. Too much one way or the other and the resulting output will not be in balance.

This by the way is the real reason behind setting tracking force. Its not wear. Its because too much (or too little) VTF will put the magnet or coil outside its optimal zone. 

Hardly anyone understands this. That's how fast you can learn and leapfrog in audiophileland. 

So anyway volume isn't normally the big reason for anti-skate, but now you can understand why you could be hearing it.

millercarbon,
How do you set up a tangential tracker with overhang?  I would call that condition a "bad job" in setting it up, not an optional method. (I'm sure you would too.) Actually, that's one of the dirty little secrets of tangential trackers; you do have to set it up exactly correctly to get the full benefit.  Off-center LPs are impossible to get right.

My only thoughts on reading some of the comments to the effect that this or that tonearm sounded "better" with no added anti-skate is that in every case there was some other force that was approximately cancelling the skating force, either bearing friction or wire drag most likely.  And this is fine.  Since the skating force is varying in magnitude at every point across the surface of the LP, and since anti-skate devices are relatively primitive, whether magnetic or string and weight type, there is no one single setting of any anti-skate device that works perfectly to cancel the skating force.  And most users tend to over-compensate.  This is why some report that their SQ got better when they disengaged AS. But the core fact is that every tonearm except a perfectly set-up tangential tonearm with a fixed pivot point will generate a skating force.  As others mentioned, Peter Ledermann, who makes a living repairing cartridges, testifies that he sees the negative effects of prolonged exposure to the skating force on cartridges he repairs.  My own solution is to set AS very low and not to think much about it after that.