Tri-Planar with no anti-skate?

Larry, that's what we've been discussing. Some of us ARE removing the AS mechanism completely from our Triplanars. Not much surgery really. Just a single cir-clip and set screw holding the thread.

Lew: How about the Stevenson alignment used by dv507 (pivoted arm) which supposely put the null point at the innermost track? The advantage of this approach is to minimize tracking error and hence reduce skating.

Where can I read more about skating force?

I suspect our differences may rest on location of the groove and the terminology. Are you refering to the general schemes of different alignment? Stevenson have increased average tracking error across the record but less skate force at the innermost tract. L and B have less averaging tracking error but increased skating at the innermost track.

I am refering to the actual forces acting on the stylus at the innermost tract. The fact that Stevenson can feature least amount of skating at the inner groove is deal to minimizing tracking error at the inner most groove ( null point).

Where can I read more about skating?

Dear Glai, If you are asking me, try searching the Vinyl Asylum for discussions of skating force. Some pretty knowledgeable guys used to post on these topics, altho of late (the last year or two) most threads are about trivia. Or, try Google.

AFAIK, the various tonearm alignment geomtrys (Stevenson, Lofgren, Baerwald, etc), are about where to place the two possible null points along the path of the stylus from outer to inner groove, and to minimize average tracking error in between those two null points. (Where "null points" means points where there is zero tracking error. You can only have two of them in an arc traversed by a pivoted tonearm.) The Stevenson geometry happens to place the innermost null point closer to the spindle than any other standard geometry, which is why Stevenson is not commonly used any longer, or so I was led to believe; most tonearm designers favor placing the null points toward the outer groove for maximum fidelity. The various geometrys will affect skating force insofar as the optimum tonearm offset angle will be different for each geometry. I'd have to think more about that, though.

Dear Sunnyboy, Dan_ed:

The Titan i has a 3um x 70um stylus, with a major radius that is over twice as large as the Orpheus' 3um x 30um stylus (which I have prior experience with).

IME, the more aggressive stylus shape means that the Titan will most likely benefit from higher AS than the Orpheus.

hth, jonathan carr