Tonearms without anti-skate, damage to records?

Some Rega arms rely on magnetism for anti skate, therefore no adjustment. Are you certain that your arm does not have a similar anti skate configuration?

This is how the unbranded (actually Rega) arm works on the Avid Ingenium plug and play.

If a turntable/tonearm has the means to set or adjust anti skate, then I’m using it.

What’s all this about the weight swinging back and forth? Mine barely moves at all when a record is playing, no distractions, I don’t get it.

I’m in the  “I hate antiskate camp!” I mean no disrespect to any who believe in it and use it. More power to you.  For me, I’ve never heard a difference, seen a difference and have always had problems with skipping, miscuing etc. I use the bare minimum if it’s availability on a tonearm. That’s my two cents. 

No one appears to have mentioned the sound quality with regards to AS. I find that the music sounds less restrained with no AS applied to my 12" Jelco 850 tonearms.

@clearthinker , While the Aeroarm is the best air bearing arm design there are issues with such a short arm. VTA changes more dramatically with elevation and the vertical effective mass can not be too low or you will start getting problems in the audio range. The horizontal effective mass is still too high. To see the problem best watch your cantilever with an eccentric record. The cantilever will lead the tonearm.  If you tap your turntable on the side you will see the cantilever wobble at a very low frequency. If you are determined to have tangential tracking get a Schroder LT. I promise you will never look back.

@dover, Not even Eminent Technology can defeat the laws of physics. Your statement about the lateral forces being less than a properly set up pivoted arm are false, almost comically so. That is like saying it is easier to push a pickup truck than it is a shopping cart. If you really want a very cool tangential tracker get a Reed 5T.

Let’s be clear on one issue: for all pivoted tonearms where the stylus overhangs the spindle, there IS a skating force at all times during play. So AS is not something you can choose not to believe in. The ways in which AS is created in different designs are all faulty, it’s fair to say, for reasons that have been mentioned, including the fact that skating force is applied at the stylus tip, whereas in all cases I know about AS is applied at or near the pivot. This puts a twisting force on the cantilever. Thus very short or more vertically oriented cantilevers might be advantageous. For those who say they can hear no difference with vs without AS, I have to wonder whether the tonearm has significant horizontal friction (or stiff wiring) that is acting to provide AS, because I can easily hear R channel distortion in the total absence of AS.