Rega planar 8 : Tracking force and Anti-skate settings


Hi,

I set my Planar 8/Apheta 3 to what I found to be sweet spot of exactly 1.81 gr of vertical tracking force. I measured it with a very accurate and calibrated 5gr scale.
I set anti skating according to what gave me the best sonic result and the reading (see attached picture) seems to correlate to the 1.81 gr tracking force.
Sound wise everything is perfect. The only issue I have is when the Apheta stylus reaches a deep crack. In this case the tonearm would jump and land 15 seconds prior to the point on the record where it jumped from. So sound wise settings are at the best spot for me but when the stylus reaches a crack it seems as if there is not enough weight on the stylus and as if tracking force pulls the tonearm towards the beginning of the record.
The problem occurs on records that were properly cleaned and sound completely quiet.
I never had such problem with my planar 3 on these points on my records .

triskadecaphobic

The question is though why doesn't Rega recommend this 0.5 anti skate value or a value close to that when it's obvious that a value similar to VTF as they recommend  produces poor sound ? The sweet spot of 0.5 is so far from their recommendation that I did not dare trying it...

You’d have to ask them. No one else recommends that much AS for a given VTF. Plus I don’t know how their AS device is calibrated.