Anti skate and tonearm damping query

NSGarch:With all cartridges except those with the stiffest suspensions, as long as you can see the cantilever from the front of the cartridge, it's quite easy to set AS force visually. I always did it that way with my MM Shure cartridges. You just lower the stylus into the groove while watching the cantilever from the front. If it deflects to the right (relative to the cartridge body) you need to add AS force. If it deflects to the left, AS needs to be reduced. No deflection of the cantilever when the stylus hits the groove means the skating force is balanced out. It could also mean that the skating force (even without AS applied) is not enough to alter the relationships in the cartridge's generator (usually because the suspension is stiff enough to resist the skating forces) and so you would HEAR no difference with or without AS applied. Nevertheless, with no AS applied, the inner groove wall of the record would wear faster than the outer groove wall

Although I don't profess to have anywhere near the expertise in these matters of several of the protagonists in this thread, Neil's statement above seems to me to be the common sense bottom line, regardless of the fact that any anti-skating setting will be a compromise to a degree that will vary with position across the record.

NSGarch: The Grace 707 is a vintage tonearm calibrated for MM cartridges, not MC which require far less AS. The rule of thumb in the MM days was that the AS should equal the VTF, and even at that, how much sideways AS force (in grams) was applied was definitely NOT the same as the actual weight on the string.

FWIW, I have over the years used several MM/MI cartridges on multiple turntables and arms (mainly a Grace F9E Ruby and a high output Grado Reference Sonata on a SOTA Sapphire with Magnepan Unitrac tonearm), and using the visual alignment method I've consistently found that the optimal setting was about 2/3 of the setting recommended by the tonearm manufacturer for the particular vtf.

Regards,
-- Al

Al, thanks for the reinforcement. You obviously have more insight/experience than you want to claim ;-)

Tonarm, I really have nothing further to say to you ;-(

Neil

Hi guys,
this developing argument reminds me somehow of what Søren Kierkegaard (19th century Danish philosopher) who once said: "If you get married you'll regret it, if you don't get married you'll also regret it, and if get married or do not get married you'll regret it.

Oh, he also said: "If you hang yourself you'll regret it, and if you don't hang yourself.... :-)

Now replace 'anti-skate' for the 'married' or 'hanged' bit, and see what it looks like...
I'd say: you regret it :-)

Greetings,
Axel

Nsgarch, I have no idea where you got the idea that the Grace was used with MM cartridges, it was sold as a package with the Linn LP 12 and Supex cartridge in England and I sold it with the 901 Supex over here. I also have no idea where you got the idea that MM and MC required different settings, I have followed the literature since the early 60s and never heard this. We are talking about a mechanical system here, how does the physical force pushing the arm know whether it is a MM or MC. Could you tell me where you got this idea? I have sold tables and cartridges for over 30 years and I never saw a mention of different compensation for MM and MC by any manufacture of either MM or MC. It was also applied SOELY on the basis of tracking weight, the test I quoted simply said that the bias force was off by a factor of two. This test was done by people whose knowledge of the subject far exceeds that of either you or I so you have either discovered something unknown to others or only true in your universe. Otherwise I would think arm manufactures such as SME would make some mention of it.

Stan, the tonearm manufacturers are indeed now catching up with the essential differences between MC and MM cartrige requirements. Or to be more specific, the difference in the tonearm settings required by cartridges with line contact styli and previous types of styli. One example of this response by manufacturers is the SME IV.V which is made specifically with MC-with-line-contact-styli in mind. It's like an SME V, but comes without silicon damping (unnecessary for MC cartridges' stiff suspensions) and without hairspring VTF adjustment (also unnecessary for cartridges tracking in the 2 gram range.) Further, no current manufacturer of quality tonearms is silly enough to assert that the user just blindly set the antiskating force scale indicator to match the VFT setting. They all know better by now ;-)

As I indicated previously, the reason MC cartridges, or more accurately, cartridges with line contact styli, require so little antiskate compensation, is because they create so little skating force to begin with. Simply put, for each gram of VTF, a line contact stylus "drags" in the groove just a fraction of the amount that a conical or elliptical stylus would. And since 'skating force' is a product (read: multiplication result) of stylus friction drag TIMES the length of a (virtual) lever arm which is created by headshell offset angle. Therefore, lower stylus drag produces less skating force with a given tonearm.

If a tonearm has no headshell offset angle (like some of the old 12 -16 inch transcription tonearms) then no skating force is produced because there is no (virtual) lever arm for the stylus "drag" to act upon. However, with long tonearms, you still pay a small price in increased tracking error and a big price in tonearm resonance and inertial momentum (the tonearm wants to keep going UP after a record warp ;-)

If you want to have your cake and eat it too, get a linear tracking tonearm - no skating force, no tracking error, stylus rake angle (SRA) adjustable while the record is playing - and they do sound fabulous, I've had one. BUT, they ARE a hassle, needing (usually) an air pump, and constant checking. Or, as you might also remember from the 60's, the goin' up just ain't worth the comin' down!