Help? Problem With Holding The Groove On A Hot Pressing

A simple procedure for setting anti-skating that I’ve found to work well, at least with cartridges having medium to high compliance (which would include the Ortofon 2M Blue, although I have no experience with that specific cartridge), and which I’ve found to generally require little if any subsequent fine tuning by ear, is as follows:

1)Observe the cartridge from the front while it is in the groove of a rotating record and positioned somewhere in the middle of the record, on a musical passage that is lightly modulated (i.e., one that has relatively low volume and consequently does not have wide groove excursions).

2)Adjust anti-skating until deflection of the cantilever to one side (left or right) becomes barely perceptible, relative to its position when the stylus is lifted off of the record. Note the setting.

3)Adjust anti-skating until deflection of the cantilever to the other side (left or right) becomes barely perceptible, relative to its position when the stylus is lifted off of the record. Note the setting.

4)Set anti-skating to the mid-point between those settings.

5)Verify that no perceptible left or right deflection of the cantilever occurs near the beginning and near the end of the record.

As I mentioned earlier, after performing this procedure I have found that little or no subsequent fine-tuning by ear is usually necessary. And I have typically found that the procedure results in a setting that is in the vicinity of 50% to 60% of the tracking force.

This procedure might not work with low compliance cartridges, btw, with which I have no experience.

Regards,
-- Al

Thank you professor Millercarbon for shutting down a dialogue and keeping me on point.

@almarg Thank you for the procedure. I will try that.

Thankfully there are a few people in this group who aren’t crippled with toxic self-absorption.

I have records that mistrack. The better the cart the smaller the problem. But even my Lyra Atlas mistracks now and then. I live with it. And I think the antiskating and other parameters should be adjusted to overall best sound, by ear - rather than to avoid occasional mistracking.
Why does it happen? In my case mostly due to defects in the pressing or subsequent misuse. Mainly it sounds like a bad particle in the vinyl compound, like a stone on the ice - or I see obvious signs of wear and tear. The LP is scratched. I have not studied this in a microscope. But I rarely, if ever, have mistracking just due to hot mastering or high dynamic in the music. Although defects show up more easily when the demand on the cartridge is high i guess.

Voiceofvinyl you have a set up problem. Your anti skate would have to be way off to cause that alone. You need to check your arm cartridge resonance frequency. If it is too high when the right bass note comes along enough energy will be created to pop the stylus right out of the groove. There is only one way to correctly set anti skating and to adjust the resonance frequency of your arm cartridge system. You get a HIFI News test record and follow the directions. You want to set a resonance frequency between 8 and 10 Hz both vertically and horizontally if you can. Once you get the hang of this it is easy and you will not believe how much better your table will sound and track. If you run into trouble just message me. Oh, and one of the silliest concepts I have ever heard is running an off set tonearm without anti skating.