Is my anti-skating too strong.

@mijostyn

you can not uncouple effective mass. If it is attached to the tonearm the tonearm must move it.

I said the ET2 has a counterweight that is decoupled in the horizontal plain, I did not say "the effective mass" is decoupled.

Now looking at your air bearing arm, the vertical effective mass is quite similar to a pivoted arm.

If the arm weights 150 gm then the effective mass in the horizontal direction is 150 gm. If a pivoted arm weights 150 grams the effective mass would only be perhaps 20 gm.

Your comments on the effective mass of the ET2 are way off base. What you fail to understand is that the total mass of the ET2 armtube, bearing spindle, counterweight beam & weight are substantially less than most conventional pivoted arms - 25-35g in total.

The specifications for effective mass for the Eminent Technology ET2
are as follows -
Horizontal effective mass - 25-35g
Vertical effective mass - 7g

Furthermore on my own ET2 I have a non standard armtube that reduces the horizontal effective mass by another 5g.

I also have modified the decoupling of the counterweight, The standard ET2 uses a leaf spring. I use a teflon V block/knife edge arrangement which allows the cantilevered counterweight to swing freely in the horizontal plain. The V block can be tightened with an allen screw - this allows me to tune the "level of decoupling" to the individual cartridge.

You can add viscous damping but then you increase the work required for the record to move the arm and you increase record wear. This is the problem the Reed 5T and the Schroder LT are

I agree with this - I dont like viscous damping.
However, I have implemented electromagnetic damping on the arm in the horizontal plain which electrically only engages when the bearing spindle is moving sufficiently, specifically eccentric records, to proprotionately dampen the back and forth motion. Interestingly the volume increases with the electromagnetic damping implemented, so the electromagnetic damping is helping the cartridge, not hindering. The Dynavector tonearms also use electromagnetic damping in the horizontal plain.

FYI I also have pivoted arms in use - FR64S/Naim Aro/Dynavector 501 {rebuilt to Baerwald}.

Are there better arms - sure - but as I stated above there is "no best arm" - I personally find cartridge and arm matching and quality of set up as important as the quality of the arm and cartridge to the end result, perhaps even more so. A poorly set up turntable/arm/cartridge, no matter how expensive, is fundamentally destructive to the music.

@dover , and there you have it dover. Horizontal effective mass is 25-35 gm and vertical is 7 gm. A normal pivoted arm might be 12 gm vertical and 13 gm horizontal. 20 gms is much to wide a divergence. Your use of terminology is a bit odd. I am looking at a picture of the ET2 as I type. The counterweight is very much a portion of the arm's effective mass. ANYTHING that moves with the arm is part of it's effective mass. In no way shape or form is the counterweight "decoupled" in this manner. 
Over the years many companies have tried to pull this one off thinking that somehow they could get around the laws of physics the last being Frank Kuzma. It should be no great surprise that people resoundingly like his brilliant 4 Point arms better. The fact is it can not be done, at least not that way. They are all destined to failure just like the ET 2. Straight trackers with a motorized carriage carrying a more typical pivoted arm might be able to do it if it were not for the difficulty in overcoming the noise and vibration of such a drive. Reed and Schroder have it right. 
Ditch the ET 2 or use it as an antenna or coat rack or something and get yourself a Schroder LT. You will be much happier and people will think you are a clever guy. It is good that you realize a cartridge has to be chosen to work correctly in a tonearm, that they have to be matched. There is no match for tonearms like the ET 2, none. There are only compromises., compromises you do not have to make with other arms.
Tracking error is not near as much of a problem as it is made out to be not that minimizing it is not a good thing. But, the price you pay with air bearing arms is just too high. 

Just to point out that there is a good argument to be made in favor of a high horizontal effective mass for producing accurate base response. I am not coming down either way on this subject, but certainly there is a school of thought that is contrary to mijostyn’s  ideology.

An effective mass of 25 gms is very high.  Whether or not this translates to a real problem is another matter.  As lewn notes, some arms deliberately have a higher horizontal mass to improve bass response, but, it is usually not that high.  Bass notes are often cut monophonically because cutting bass stereophonically would mean excessive changes in the depth of the groove.  A high effective horizontal mass means that the arm will not swing side to side from the needle tracking the wide modulation of the groove (the full groove swing will be translated to movement of the cantilever instead of some of the movement lost to the movement of the arm).

A high effective horizontal mass means that the arm will not swing side to side from the needle tracking the wide modulation of the groove (the full groove swing will be translated to movement of the cantilever instead of some of the movement lost to the movement of the arm).

Perhaps you could explain why it is imperative to have the cartrdge swinging around whilst trying to measure the groove. Have you ever tried to accurately measure the height of your ceiling whilst jumping up and down on a trampoline - you can't.