Does removing anti-skating really improve sound?

Krell, Over the years there does seem to be general agreement that the "recommended" amount of AS is usually too much for best SQ and even for lowest wear on the cartridge.  So, your son's experience is typical. In the good old days, the AS mechanism was sometimes marked with values starting at 0.5 or 1.0.  These often were to indicate that if you were tracking at 1.0g, you should use the 1.0 setting on the AS device.  Almost always, that is too much AS.

Thinking about the varying levels, ie. average and peak levels being quite different, the best *sounding* antiskating will rather compensate levels with average modulation.
This will need less compensation than trying to minimize and center distortion artefacts on high level modulations, like eg. 70u.
This latter method is what I used in earlier times, but my feeling was that I usually ended with too high antiskating settings.
I tend to agree, that (one of the better methods of) "traditional" adjustment results in too high antiskating for optimal music replay (with musics low to moderate average levels - and relative friction).

My first 17d2 started sounding a bit lop sided after a few years, all right a few too many years even for a micro ridge stylus. The arm was a Rega RB300 and I’d believed the instruction to just set the magnetic anti-skate to the same value as the VTF. The result was not only an unevenly worn stylus but the cantilever was squed to one side and slightly twisted, I eventually got it checked under a high powered stereo microscope which confirmed the stylus wear. I set up the anti-skate on its replacement using the blank track on a test disc and that one was still straight when it was replaced. With that arm I could never hear much difference. When I replaced it with a Naim Aro with its thread and weight there was one of the possible settings that sounded livelier than the others (using solo piano music) so I used that. With my current Schöder I set it initially with the test disc and then fine tune for best dynamics, as far as I can determine by ear, which is a bit less than the test disc setting.

Millercarbon....or increase vtf slightly to eliminate mistracking.  Very many high end audiophiles don't use a/s

I am not at the engineering level of most of the contributors of this thread but let me pose a  solution that I think is quite simple and then you all can make fun of me.
The stylus travels in almost  a straight line toward the center.
The skating force is along the same line .
If you tilt)level the entire turntable in the opposite direction of the skating force, won't gravity compensate to keep the stylus at a neutral skate?