Does removing anti-skating really improve sound?

mijostyn

 the most important thing I have learned in this passionate hobby over the last 55 years is, Never Trust Your Ears.

Surely you meant to say that you can never trust YOUR ears. How on Earth would you know about anyone else? But trust me when I say, if your 55 years has taught you not to trust your own ears, I believe you.

Dear @mijostyn : """  Cartridges in pivoted tonearms track much better and have much lower distortion with anti skating set correctly.  "

Yes but the problem word in that statement is: " correctly " and till today exist no single method/mechanism to set up " correctly ". 

The best approach to comes in that link on the Sony PUA 237 tonearm. It's very interesting to read not only its manual but the link there " bias compensation " wide explanation. I said the best approach but not correctly/perfect.

Using test records is not any science and can't really helps. Why? because the AS testing record modulations are recorded at an specific space in the surface of the LP and because the S vector changes at each single grooves modultions.

Set up of AS maybe is the more complicated and almost imposible to do it " correctly ". 

R. 

Finally took a photo of my 20yrs+ cartridge. Don’t want to guess how many hours I’d logged on her but the diamond still looks pretty good. Anti-skating was minimal to none.

https://img.usaudiomart.com/uploads/user_image/149477/25976.jpg

@mosler666 you can't judge about your stylus condition with pictures like you have posted. 

If you want to see how close you have to get to the stylus with a nice microscope read this article. 

Trusting your ears and knowing what you like to listen to are two very different subjects. Distinguishing fine differences in sound is difficult for humans because our audio memory is so short. Not only this but because of our brains ability to accommodate a system that sounds awful does not sound so bad after a while which is why you always trust your initial impression. Fortunately distortion being so dissonant is always easy to hear like the elephant in your garage is easy to see. Knowing these things makes you a much better listener. Most of what Cleeds thinks he hears is his brain screwing around with him assuming he has one. 
Any pivoted offset tonearm that does not have anti skating can be thrown in the trash unless you want to jury rig a system for it. Turntable setup is not art, it is a science requiring extreme fastidiousness. There are lots of things brains can't do well which is why we have test records.
Raulruegas the best you can do is to set the bias so the stylus tracks the test record correctly. It is the best approximation you can get. Looking at the cantilever only gets you in the ballpark. This method will not work with very stiff cartridges like Koetsus. The other neat trick is to find an album with a blank side like Cleopatra by the Lumineers. You can get in the ballpark by adjusting the bias so the arm does not drift or drifts outward slightly when you play the blank. Never trust the scales on the tonearm. They are great for reference. For example if you are a cartridge jockey you record all the settings for each cartridge so you can return to them easily without having to go through the whole process again.