Does removing anti-skating really improve sound?

lewm and especially pegasus, right on. This is another one of those things that looks simple enough in theory but gets complicated fast in practice, mainly because in theory everything is static when in reality everything is dynamic and constantly moving. The blank record demonstrates skating but can't be used to set skating force because its blank. These forces are constantly changing depending on groove modulation. Then they change even more when the whole record is going back and forth, which it always does, because the spindle hole is never perfectly in the center, on and on. Good call pegasus catching what no one ever mentions, damping. Even Fremer never mentioned that, and he never misses anything! Good one!

I'm a little surprised at not hearing any difference with my arm. Well not that surprised. It was a real quick and dirty test. The Conqueror uses the fishing line with weight method. I simply moved it so the line wasn't going through the hoop and sat the weight down. The loop the wire goes over, the adjusting rod, all of which for sure is vibrating and messing things up when a record is playing, all that was left in place. The way I see it, if I hear a big improvement like tubelvr1 heard then the rest comes off. But it better be worth the extra stylus wear too. And it wasn't even close.

So pretty much like I thought- there's so much difference in design and implementation that you just can't get away with blanket conclusions. Does removing anti-skating really improve the sound? It depends.

Cleeds, The fact that you cannot see the forest for the trees does not make me wrong. Of course headshell offset angle and other reasons for lack of tangency of the cantilever to the groove are what results in the skating force but there would be no FORCE, with a capital F, without the need to oppose the force of friction between stylus tip and groove. Can you get that?

Have you ever studied Newtonian mechanics? Sit down with a piece of paper and draw some vectors depicting the pull of the stylus that is due to friction in the groove and the need for the tonearm, cartridge, cantilever, and stylus to oppose that force, which is ultimately expressed as the skating force, pulling the cartridge toward the spindle.  This happens because the tonearm is stiff and the connection between it and the cartridge is solid. Otherwise the actual force that counteracts friction is toward the rear and inside the arm wand, but the cartridge can’t move that way because of the stiffness of the structure, so another vector is generated which ends up in the skating force. 

 As I think you have understood, in a straight line tonearm the force of friction is in a straight line with the pivot, if the tonearm is ideal which doesn’t really happen. But in that ideal case there is no skating force because there is no angle between the force of friction in the groove and the force needed to counteract that friction to prevent the cartridge from flying off into space. 

Obviously, your TT was not set up properly, and\or the anti skate is miscalibrated or out of spec. Grace recommended setting the antiskate by looking at the stylus as an LP plays, then adjusting it until the stylus remains the straightest.

lewm

... Of course headshell offset angle and other reasons for lack of tangency of the cantilever to the groove are what results in the skating force ...

Exactly, and that's been my point. We're much more in agreement here than not.

but there would be no FORCE, with a capital F, without the need to oppose the force of friction between stylus tip and groove

Yes, friction is a factor with LP playback and, for that matter, everything else that has moving parts. That doesn't mean friction is the cause of skating force, and you do seem to understand that. So there's no reason to continue this little debate.

This is going to be cartridge dependent. No brand, not even model. Each will be different. I would think models will be similar, though. I've had cartridges that perform best with no bias, very little bias, and bias set much closer to the VTF setting. So why use it? Because I don't own your cartridge.