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Help! Antiskate with only a weight...no dial, and she's skating away!

I have a project rpm 10 carbon with 10cc evolution tonearm that has a weight on a string for antiskate. There are three notches on which to attach the string based upon the tracking force range of the cartridge. I currently have an ortofon cadenza bronze tracking at 2.5g and have the antiskate weight in the appropriate notch (according to the Pro-ject manual) from which it hangs. The table is level--checked and adjusted to ensure. The tracking force is at 2.514g (the range for the cadenza is 2.2-2.7 with 2.5 suggested by ortofon) checked with a digital scale (Riverstone Audio digital scale). The soundstage sounds great, vocals are centered, other instruments are placed in space according to the recording... Also the alignment was carefully set up using the WallyTractor and is spot on. 

But sometimes when I lower the stylus to the lead in groove, it will slide very quickly towards the spindle as though no antiskate were present (it doesn’t skip over the record, it falls into the first song groove--and yes I have confirmed that the stylus is present). But it’s a big jump vs just sliding into the groove.

So I found a blank side of an album and lowered the stylus onto the surface and it immediately slid all the way across the surface towards the spindle as though no antiskate were in play. I then disengaged the antiskate weight and experienced the same (expectedly so). But there seemed to be little or no difference between antiskate being engaged/disengaged.

So I engaged the weight again and lowered the stylus, but this time I placed a little extra force on the weight with my finger and was able to get the tonearm to stay in position--applicable antiskate force in play with this extra force. Of course, I have no way of measuring how much extra weight I applied.

The help I need:
Why is the recommended antiskate parameters set by pro-ject seemingly having no effect?
Is something else wrong?
The table and tonearm are obviously manufactured to handle this level of VTF, no?
The tonearm wires don’t appear to be impeding the arm movement.
What can I do to remedy this?
Do I need to do something to remedy this?
I wonder if I’m causing harm to the cantilever with what appears to be no antiskate, yet the music sounds great and the Analogue productions test LP record antiskate tracks "sound" equal to my ears. (But my ears aren’t young anymore, so I don’t think I can place full confidence in that audible test).

Any thoughts, suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
cabalaska
cabalaska OP
21 posts
 
Stringreen:
Seven posts prior to your post at 10:59 on 4/15/2021, Dover asked me to do this experiment to see if the arm mount may be the source of the trouble in that perhaps it was mounted unlevel. See his post above. 
dover
2,247 posts
 
@stringreen

I suggested this to check that the arm was mounted on a level base and there is no dominant drift in or out.
I have seen some TT’s where the armboard was not level and anti skate had to be very high to offset the drift.
From the video he does not have a problem with the arm - so that means alignment or other cartridge set up must be the issue.
I do notice that the arm tends to drift back to centre of the horizontal travel in and out - this could be an indicator of some force exerted by the internal wires.

@cabalaska


I went back through your posts again.

Does the skating to centre only occur when you first lower the arm ?

If so check that the arm lift lowers in time - lower the arm and check there is a gap between the lift and the bottom of the arm when the stylus reaches the record..

Sometimes if the armlift is too slow then when the stylus reaches the record, if it is not completely clear and the cartridge effectively is trying to track at less than the tracking force set because the armlift has not fully lowered.

You can check this by watching the gap between arm & lift lift when you lower the stylus.



stringreen's avatar
stringreen
6,470 posts
 
Dover... thanks....I have a short attention span..... anyway....I think the arm is acting as mine does. Another thought is that as you know, many records have a raised outer edge. If your arm is lowering too quickly, it will slide down this edge before the stylus can engage on to the enscribed music. Have you used a Fozgometer to zero in the arm? It will tell you if the stylus was mounted square in its attachment. I’ve seen so many cartridges even very expensive ones that were way off.....I think I also read of this problem on Audio Planet.....not saying yours is off....but a check might be prudent.
cabalaska OP
21 posts
 
Good thoughts.  The armlift is working appropriately and when lowering onto the table while playing a record, it does not slide towards the spindle. It will do that a little bit at the beginning of the record, but as Stringreen has stated, many records have a lip. Also it doesn't do this on every record I play. 

I heard from Pro-ject, but they have asked for more information which I have supplied. Hopeful feedback from them soon.  Thanks to all for the continued interest and suggestions/questions. 
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