INNER GROOVE DISTORTION

For what it's worth, the bearing type would have nothing to do with the magnitude of the skating force, all other things being equal, or of the amount of anti-skate needed to correct distortion due to the skating force.  It's merely that with a unipivot, excessive skating force would tend to pull the azimuth off.  Whereas, with a gimbal type, the headshell cannot roll around its longitudinal axis, thus there can be no effect on azimuth.
And finally, I still say that excessive skating force or excessive anti-skate would cause distortion most noticeable in one of two channels, not both at the same time, and would not exclusively affect inner grooves.  Such errors should be noticeable all across the LP surface, to varying degrees depending upon the magnitude of the skating force at any point.

Hi Joe

I did watch Peter Lederman and experimented with adding some anti-skating with some good results.

So did you try lowering the stylus in between the runout grooves. What happened?

When the tech from Overture Audio { who have been great } comes to swap out arms I won’t let him leave until I am completely satisfied. I have too large an investment in this not to have great sound from the entire record.

He is going to put on a few records .Can’t do more than that. Your hearing while he is there - will not be in the same state as when you are alone, with friends, family, relaxed and listening. Just saying I used to do this for friends.

You can give a man a fish....or you can teach him to fish. In millercarbon’s case it seems a beer will do it. 8^0

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when someone posts as they have on your thread.

I hear no inner groove issue ...although the beginning of the record always sounds better than the end

That is describing inner groove distortion. No one on your thread seems to want to discuss the Elephant in the room. The Record.

There is a lot more vinyl, bigger grooves, at the beginning of a record. The grooves are much smaller at the end. The beginning of the record should be, based on physics, always sounding better at the beginning. How resolving ones room is (and their hearing) will factor into if one can hear this.

Due to the above - , "anything" that is going to impede the stylus travel, be it tonearm setup, alignment, antiskate, condition of record - will be heard more readily at the end. Another challenge for the vinyl audiophiles.

The above - the Inner Record Grooves - is Analog’s answer to - Digital Compression.

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Because my pivot arm’s cartridge is angled in (cocked in, as Peter from Soundsmith likes to say) - toward the spindle. The more friction in the groove (increased VTF) results in needing more anti skate. For this reason Peter’s test involving the Inner Groove test only goes so far.

Classical music - due to the varying levels of modulation (loudness) - is the biggest challenge against groove distortion and applying anti skate. We all are just trying to bring the distortion level down to a level that is bearable for us. And this "level" differs for all of us. JMO

Happy Listening and Merry Christmas to everyone.

The VPI  Gimbal pivot is better in some ways than is the single pivot (spike).  The more solid bass, etc. ...greater clarity from the gimbal can be had by adding the 2nd pivot modification to the spiked arm.  Easy to do and for 150 dollars is money well spent.

Ct, You wrote, ""anything" that is going to impede the stylus travel, be it tonearm setup, alignment, antiskate, condition of record - will be heard more readily at the end. Another challenge for the vinyl audiophiles."
Can you be more clear about what you wanted to say here? Because in some sense, none of the factors you list, maybe apart from dirt in the grooves, would be expected to impede stylus travel.  I believe the traditional meaning of the term "Inner Groove Distortion" refers to the fact that, as you mention, the LP has to crowd musical information into an increasingly shorter linear path, as the LP runs out of grooves. (Plus there is usually more tracking angle error on the innermost grooves, unless you're using Stevenson alignment.) There are analogies to this phenomenon in tape and digital reproduction as well.  Tape running at 15 ips and using half a track would be expected to provide much higher fidelity than the same tape running at 7.5 ips an using only one-quarter of a track, etc. And this is also why in theory 45 rpm sounds better than 33 rpm.  I'm sure you know this, which is why I wonder what you are saying above.

I must confess to have been very proud when I succeeded to
get 90 microns ''pure'' (without any buzz) with my (then) Ortofon
MC 20 with the help of my test record. The part about ''tracking
ability'' test. But then I come across the warning by Van den Hul:
''no antiskate is better than too much antiskate''. To get those
''impressieve'' 90 microns I needed to increase antiskate force.
So whenever ''buzz'' appeared in the right channel I increased the
anti skate. But thanks to Van den Hul I still have no idea how
much anti-skate is ''allowed''. So I use 0,5 g force for each cart.