Does removing anti-skating really improve sound?

Larry. Thx for your input. The paper you cite is interesting. But I guess I pay more attention than you did to the first paragraph, with all its qualifications. It clearly states that the phenomenon exhibited by the experiments done for this paper might be restricted to deformable objects such as a tennis ball. The data and the paper don’t convince me that I am completely wrong. Have you or has anyone noticed an increase in skating force when playing 45 RPM records.? I have not. Now I will go ahead and read the rest of the paper. Perhaps it will change my mind. The question here is whether a diamond stylus tip and a vinyl record groove would behave classically, as described by da Vinci and coulomb, or surprisingly as did the objects used in this particular paper. I obviously enjoy these debates. Which is one reason I am sticking to my guns. For now.

By the way, stiction doesn’t count. We are talking strictly about kinetic friction, not the friction force that pertains when one is setting a stationary object into motion with respect to a surface with which it is in contact.

A very rough experiment could be done with a blank record.  One could set anti-skating so that the arm stays roughly in place at a certain radius for 33.33 rpm, and then set the stylus down at the same point when playing a 45 rpm record.  If the stylus now moves decisively inward at 45 rpm, friction has increased with the increased velocity.

For goodness sakes, even 4 years later, kinetic friction is not affected by velocity, because the equation that defines kinetic friction has no term in it for velocity. You can't change the definition or the equation that constitutes the definition, to suit your needs.  And the above experiment, using a blank LP, is totally useless.