Does removing anti-skating really improve sound?

No AS results in a more open sound. By contrast, AS brings greater focus and more stable L to R image. It also enhances the bass somewhat.

brilliant ears, lol

The thread in your arm will also dampen its movement and resonances. Over the years I have run my tonearms (VPI, Sumiko The Arm, Grace 840FB, Lustre GST 801) without AS, without harm to my styli or records.

How can you inspect your stylus, do you have powerful microscope? The professional retippers opinion is opposite to yours. I also have Lustre GST-801 and the sound is just fine with its magnetic anti-skating.

This thread has me keen to try mine without tonight. Origin Live Conqueror, uses the fishing line weight method, easy to disconnect, will have to give it a try tonight.

Hard to believe, but sounds virtually the same. Maybe a tiny bit more open and present without. Maybe. Nowhere near enough to be worth even a tiny risk of faster/uneven wear. Oh well. No surprise really. Origin Live Conqueror. Not like they were ever likely to have left that stone unturned.

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I used to work for the BSR turntable company back in the 70's as a line repairman.  We had a smooth disc that looked like a groove less record. When placing the tone arm on the spinning disc the arm would quickly swing inward if the anti-skate was too low.  And,  would swing outwardly if set too high.  The centrifugal force created by the spinning record does the same thing.  If set too low, the inner groove will be getting most of the pressure from the stylus, and if too high the outward inner groove will will get the most contact.

I had the job to adjust a Benz LP S (or was it a Gullwing?) on a SME 345 arm in a high class system. I fine-tuned and two colleagues (and me) were listening carefully while optimizing VTF (& VTA) and anti-skating. - I was open to the idea, that no offset might sound better, but we agreed that setting antiskating to a considerable non-zero position sounded best, with fine adjustments being audible in center focus, but also natural timbre. The sound was somewhat more coherent, nuanced and stable with AS. This was a small surprise as I am skeptical to the mechanical compromises of AS devices. But the SME 345 seems to have "a good one".
- amazing was also how minimal changes in *VTF* of 0.05 gram were audible, with a clear optimum. (at that temperature.. :-) this had more sonic effect BTW.
- the weight / string somehow "does the job" too, but there is a certain non-zero friction that hampers (more) on stable centeredness of the cantilever.
- AS tries to center the cantilever, balancing left/right forces on the suspension. This results, as said above, in an optimal position of coils/magnets vs. the magnetic circuit.

- the principal problem with arms with offset angle/overhang is that the friction on the stylus (and the  cantilever that holds the stylus) works in a considerable angle relative to the tonearm center. This friction changes dynamically, with every scratch, every variation of modulation, every difference in vinyl properties or surface debris, even within one rotation.
- longer arms have less offset angle and improve this geometrical aspect.
- AS can’t neutralize the dynamic variations, only the static ones.Strong horizontal damping would optimize that aspect together with AS, but has it’s own set of compromises.
- the Thales arms have much less overhang, though they still have a (lesser) varying absolute offset of the cantilever vs. the stylus/tonearm center line.

- You’d have to go a long way in dis-adjustment on a linear tracking arm to create the normal geometrically generated problems of one of the normal arms. (Even if they can work very, very well :-).
- I’d say from my experience that it is no problem to adjust a linear tracking arm within 0.5mm error in overhang. The offset pull on the cantilever will be very small under these circumstances.