How To Control The Eager Beaver

Most automatic turntable are now very old and are in need of lubrication and servicing.  Most of the gears used in auto table are mode from plastic which have become hard and brittle which can result is loss of gear teeth.

Not enough anti-skate, it is pulling in as soon as it hits the surface, it takes a few grooves just to keep it in a groove, and it is pulling in too much the entire play, of EVERY LP, wearing both the stylus and the grooves.

are you able to adjust anti-skate on that unit?

You cannot rely on the dials/indicators being accurate, you can set it visually.

Get one of these protractor discs with ’other side blank’.

hudson hifi protractor, other side blank

after you double-check all your alignments on the protractor side, set anti-skate to zero, set your tracking weight

now, on the disc’s blank side, manually spin the platter, lower the arm, see it pull in even though no grooves, that is the natural force any and all pivoted arms exhibit.

adjust the anti-skate slowly while seeing the results, check in a little from the outer edge, check out a little bit from the inner edge, make the best compromise.

Most often, skipping inward has to do with the point a which the arm is set down and the speed at which the arm is set down.  Records have a raised bead around the edge of the record to strengthen the record at its most exposed part, and in the old days, to keep the playing surface from contacting another record when stacked for automatic play.  When the needle is set down on top of that raised bead, it falls down that little hill and can gain enough momentum to slide past the first grooves.  If you have the ability to adjust the point of set down, choose a point farther into the record and away from the edge.  It seems counter intuitive to set a needle down further into the record when it is skipping the first grooves, but this works.  It also helps to have a slow descent of the arm to also reduce the momentum sliding down the edge bead.

If you cannot adjust the set down point, you can keep the arm cued up, and before cuing down, you can nudge the arm a little bit inward to miss the bead.

While excessive anti-skating can exacerbate the problem, it is not the primary cause.  If it were the cause the needle would continue to slide in well past the first few grooves because skating force is not much different between the first contact point and where it stops sliding inward.  

@larryi 

  I suspect that is the issue.  My dealer had just checked the settings on the tt and cart.  When I manually lower the arm about half the time the issue occurs; probably I am setting it past the hill on some occasions.

I agree with Larry in that I think the stylus is sliding on the raised lip. That plus too low a setting of VTF could result in the observed problem. But I would also point out that the skating force does pull the stylus inward toward the label, so too much AS (which pulls in the opposite direction) would not be expected to be the cause of this problem. Maybe try increasing VTF by just a hair so as not to exceed the recommended max? And see that that does.

However, the skating force alone is usually not sufficient in magnitude to account for the observation, unless the tonearm is wildly misaligned. Think of it, zero anti-skate, which results in unopposed skating force, all other things being properly adjusted, does not cause the stylus to skip outer grooves per se. Moreover, the skating force is not maximal at the outermost grooves.

Good turntables are wonderful things, but they sure are a pain in the butt!

I don’t have any problems like that when listening to Qobuz’s higher quality than vinyl music on my mid-fi system (NA C700, Monitor Audio Silver floorstanders).

Wow!!!  great job of diagnostics on this issue APHs. That your knowledge on such an analog subject is great is not surprising. It’s that the use of digital streaming is so prevalent in this community I thought maybe analog use was nearing its death. 

@larryi excessive antiskating would pull the stylus OUTWARD and not inward as your answer indicates. 
 

Furthermore, all records have a raised lip and that’s something a properly adjusted tt/tonearm should handle with ease. Thus, dropping the stylus further in is only a hopeful workaround, not addressing the cause itself. 
 

@elliottbnewcombjr I agree with you.

OP, I suggest you check and adjust the tracking force as needed, and dial-up the antiskate a bit and see if this fixes the issue. 

I wondered about insufficient anti-skate, but for skating force to pull the stylus inwards, it has to be in a groove. I have had experiences where the stylus drops, bounces and jumps inwards - all without spending any time in a groove. So I suspect the raised rim on the disc is responsible for bouncing a quickly dropping stylus towards the spindle. Solution is to lower the stylus more slowly, and/or be a bit more accurate with placement just before the first track. If this is a fully automatic TT then that might be difficult.

absolutely no groove needed, anti-skate happens 'naturally' on a blank sided disc,

that is why you can see the effect increase/lessen as you add/reduce anti-skate force using the blank side of hudson hifi's, any other single sided discs (don't get the version with strobe on the other side)

protractor one side, other side blank

rather, inward skate, inward pull, happens naturally for any pivoted arm, on any smooth surface, no groove needed to make/see it happen.

anti-skate, which we apply, counters the natural force

you want your stylus ’floating’, so it drops down into the groove and reacts equally to input from either side of the groove as well as up and down. getting the most of advanced stylus, further down in the groove, depends on proper countering of the naturally occurring inward skate.

preventing an advanced stylus from damaging grooves, from uneven wear of itself, to get the 'potential' longer life, based on straight and proper even l/r surface contact

@elliottbnewcombjr Thank you for the tutorial on using the flat side of my protractor; dang thing didn’t come with instructions, now I know how to check one of the most mysterious adjustments to my turntables. The mystery being I never know if I’ve gotten it right, only when it’s obviously wrong. 
Next up: Overhang! I just put it where it looks straight and hope it’s good. But I probably need to start another thread on the topic. 

Yes, I inadvertently said excessive anti-skating would pull the arm inward.  The point I was trying to make is that, if the skip inward is not entirely a skating force, but, the momentum from falling off the edge bead, trying to use anti-skating to prevent this action will result in excessive anti-skating while playing the record.  It is better to set the arm for correct anti-skating and avoid the problem of skipping at the beginning by setting the arm down correctly.  Some automatic tables have an adjustment for this, those that do not, require one to have the arm cued up when starting the table, then nudging the arm to the right position before cuing down, or slowly manually cuing down to reduce the momentum of the arm falling off the bead.  

you can make a quickie overhang/null points protractor if you can punch/drill/cut a hole in a piece of stiff paper to fit onto a spindle, then simply draw a line across the center of the hole, and make some marks where you want them.

overhang is easy, centerline of spindle to centerline of stylus tip,

do not tighten, loosely snug, because you may be twisting the cartridge body sideways in the headshell a bit to get the best 'straight to the lines' for the 2 null points, then tighten speck by speck, re-check when tight, avoid movement when tightening

Elliot, you meant to say that skating (not “antiskate”) occurs even on blank vinyl, but the magnitude and even the vector direction of the skating force are different when the stylus is tracing a groove. Nevertheless some do set AS using a blank area on an LP. But try as one might there is no single setting of AS that will precisely counter the skating force across the playing surface of an LP. Experience for me and many others is just to set AS at some low value (some say ~10% of VTF, but how do you quantify AS force?) and hope for the best. I still maintain that skating force is not causing the OP’s stylus to skip, at least not skating alone.

lewm,

you are correct, see my correction above

....................................

I use the sound/imaging of these 3 guitar players to refine anti-skate by ear

Friday Night in San Francisco, get both CD and LP

all 3 ONLY Play on the last 2 tracks, listen to the audience imaging also

1st, you need the CD version, become familiar with the last two tracks, hear it with no involvement of a Turntable’s right or wrong setup

2nd, LP, side two, last two tracks, everything else correct: help refine final anti-skate adjustment

Have fun with that. The precise proper amount of AS will be different for different LPs and certainly even for different musical passages on any single LP. So, when you set it for Friday Night at SF, it may be correct for parts of that particular LP. Since the skating force varies with the composition of the vinyl and the complexity of the musical passage and with tracking angle error (TAE) and zenith error, not to mention with VTF and stylus shape, and since the magnitude of TAE varies in a somewhat predictable manner across the LP surface, the best one can hope for is to be precisely correct at two points on the LP surface, because the changes in TAE magnitude with respect to the distance from outer to inner grooves roughly describes a parabola, any constant amount of AS will at best intersect a parabola at two moments during play.

This may be just my tainted observation, but my tangential player tracks warps just fine...  Now, this could be a pleasant side effect from not needing anti-skate required with a pivoting arm.

Any thoughts?  Curious minds, all that....

Pre-thanks, J 

My only thought is that "just fine" is not quantitative.  Most of us would say the same for our pivoted tonearms.  Anyway, you raise an interesting question: what difference does it make tracking warps with a pivoted vs a tangential tonearm? Why would skating force and the application of AS make any difference?  Answer for me is I don't know.

@lewm 

When you wrote AS I read A$.

There should be no skating force with a linear tracking (tangential) tone arm, except some side force has to drag it across the record. I am somewhat familiar with the Holbo deck which has both an air-bearing for the tone arm and another for the platter.

@asvjerry

Traversing a vertical warp momentarily increases the tracking force, then decreases it as the stylus goes downhill.  With a pivoted tone arm, the skating force is proportional to the tracking force.  In the extreme when the stylus gets airborne, it will be pulled away from the center by the anti-skating device, which tangential tracking arms do not need

No, you are correct, RB, there should be no skating force with a tangential tracker.  The only side force would be to overcome any friction in the carriage, and there is always some of that, which is why the best LT tonearms in my opinion float the carriage on an air bearing.

And you've answered the question.  Warps throw the balance of skating force vs AS out of whack, momentarily. I'd never thought to worry about that, so I won't start now.

The issue with tangential tracking arms of the air bearing or ultra low friction variety (e.g., Clearaudio) is that the arm does not have the mechanical advantage of a pivot/fulcrum, so considerable force is imparted on the stylus/cantilever to pull the arm assembly sideways across the record. 

In some cases that force is much higher than skating forces and there has been reported damage to cartridges.  There are ways to make pivoted tangential tracking arms.  The earliest used a sensor to detect when the arm is no longer tangent to the grooves and a motor to then move the arm/pivot assembly to again achieve tangency.

There are modern versions based on Thales circles, that has a conventional arm attached to a base that rotates to move the whole arm into a new position to achieve tangency (Reed T5, Shroeder LTA), these arms achieve tangency and virtually no skating forces while minimizing other adverse consequences.  

There are also straight arms that have not offset angle at the headshell.  The tracking geometry is WAY off with these arms, but, skating force is substantially less than that of arms with an offset angle.  I have heard some examples and I was quite surprised that the lack of any attempt to get close to tangency of the cantilever to the groove did not seem to hurt performance much.

Larry, That is an interesting idea, but I don't get it. The force applied to the stylus/cantilever would be to counter the force of friction between stylus and groove, and here, with a tangential arm, we have a cantilever that is always tangent to the groove across the entire LP. So the friction force would only vary according to groove tortuosity, ideally.  The carriage end that holds on to the arm wand has the same job as the pivot bearing does in a conventional pivoted overhung tonearm, to resist friction or stylus drag. For much of the time (except for two moments when the stylus passes through the two null points on the surface of an LP, if your pivoted tonearm is set up properly), with a conventional arm, the cantilever is not tangent to the groove, which imparts a side force on the cantilever. I would think that's "worse" than with a tangential arm.

Properly designed tonearms that have zero headshell offset also underhang the pivot. That's a huge distinction from tonearms with an offset headshell that overhang the pivot. In order to minimize TAE, Lofgren, Bearwald, Stevenson, et al, introduced the overhung tonearm and headshell offset, regardless of the effect on skating force. You are correct that the resulting high TAE of an underhung straight tonearm does not result in audible distortion. But you say it doesn't hurt performance "much".  I'd say it does not hurt performance at all, and in fact there is much to be said about the at least equally excellent performance of underhung tonearms with zero offset. (And I've said it elsewhere so won't bore you with my rationale.)

An air bearing tangential arm is not subject to  skating force.  But, in order for the stylus/cantilever to drag the arm along the air bearing, even with little friction, a lot more force is required, in part because of the high horizontal inertial mass of such arms, but many because of the loss of mechanical advantage of a fulcrum/pivot arrangement.  Whether or not this was the cause, I know of a couple people who insisted that they snapped cantilevers on some delicate cartridges when using a Walker table with air bearing arms.

I use the term "much" in describing the effect of the tracking angle error of the straight arms, because I could not discern any obvious negative sonic attribute to such design, even though calculations show that there is higher distortion levels from that geometry, but I could not say for certain that there was not "any" negative attributes.  I should have been clearer on this.  I am impressed by such arms.  If I were to get another arm, I  would seriously consider this type of arm, specifically the Viv arm.  It sounded very dynamic and lively as compared to conventional arms.