Anti Skating adjustment

Thanks Oldears! I totally agree and suspect that either the suspension (piano wire tension) has somehow been affected or the damper material is causing it. Soundsmith retipped the cartridge with a ruby cantilever just recently from the original diamond coated boron type. The length of the cantilever appears a little longer than the original and the compliance seems to be higher, although if just the cantilever/stylus was changed, I would think that the suspension would not have been affected. The A/S does appear to work correctly when spinning a "flat" track like the Cardas record. I will recheck again. I never really gave this much attention to all this until this cartridge came along.
Should one make VTF, overhang, zeneth, and azimuth alignments with no A/S then after all is setup then adjust A/S? Then adjust A/S (or bias)with either a test record (which checks for distortion only at 300Hz) or as Soundsmith recommends by listening to a mono track and adjusting for least or equal bleed through on the "empty" channel? In the past I would set VTF and A/S the same (as Jelco/Audioquest recommends) then set physical orientation and then recheck VTF after that? The last adjustment would be VTA.

Yep, I just rechecked the bias with no VTF (balanced) and the A/S dial set to 0 produces no horizontal movement when "blowing" straight down on the headshell from above. Just a slight amount movement on the dial does start to move the tonearm away from the spindle. I set the VTF at 1.7grams with digital gauge and with A/S dial at zero there is still deflection easily seen. The sylus tip geometry is correct or at least looks straight down and vertical in relationship with the cantilever. It has to be the suspension!! I just bought this cartridge on Audiogon from an owner who had the retip service conducted by Soundsmith just recently. I would think that Peter at Soundsmith would check the suspension on arrival and before shipment out. I can't see how one would damage the suspension (previous owner) and not break the ruby cantilever. Oh well...my loss!

Imho abd experience the antiskating force is if not the same a little bit less than the vtf.

As the Vta the perfect way to get it right is begining from a standard point (arm paralel to the platter) and move up and down. With the A/S vegining from the vtf number and increase or decrease simply listening.

Forget to use the non-groove vinyl procedure because it is not right. It simply doesn't work

My anti skate force is about 1/10th of my VTF.

There is not a single "correct" anti-skate force. It is always an approximation that gives "better" performance given a constantly changing set of variables. Yes, listening is the best way to set anti-skate force, but it isn't the most helpful advice.

There are many "tricks" to help best determine this approximation. My personal favorite is steady the cartridge near the outer edge of a blank CD-R (similar to the blank LP method). I believe this is the method suggested by both Peter Ledermann and Frank Schroder (but my espresso hasn't kicked in, so my memory may be foggy).

Correcting an error in an earlier post, VTA is set with the top surface of the cartridge parallel to the platter.

Not the tonearm.