Tonearms without anti-skate, damage to records?

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.

1. Few people mention the VERY IMPORTANT lever force of the cantilever/coil former on the coil damper. There is a 6:1 lever arm there. So, if your arm has ZERO internal torque forces prior to anti-skate application and you decide you won’t use anti-skate force then you can live with the following: skating force is ON AVERAGE, 10% of your VTF. If your VTF is 2gm then there is 0.2gm of horizontal force at the stylus. Multiply that by 6 times to determine the force on one side of the damper and -6 times on the other side of the damper. That is 1.2 and -1.2 grams of asymmetric force applied on the VERY critical coil damper - 60% of your VTF! The sound of alleviating this force is unmistakable: more relaxed sound, larger soundstage, more overall coherency and intelligibility.
2. For those who say it doesn’t make a sonic difference, I cannot argue with them because we cannot know what their STARTING horizontal torque force was. Unless they used a WallySkater to measure their starting torque, neither can they. If their starting torque force was, say, 5% towards the spindle and then they applied a 15% anti-skate force then the absolute net asymmetric force would have remained unchanged. There are several scenarios like this that reduce the benefits of utilizing the anti-skate mechanism. You NEED to know what your starting and ending torque is to make sure you have it applied properly.
3. Watch THIS VIDEO at about 7:00 showing the angular effects of skating force. This was done on a 12" tonearm. If I had done it on a 9" arm the angular change would have been even greater.
4. This angular change affects the alignment of the left/right contact edges of the stylus in the groove wall to a greater degree than the maximum angular error across the record surface. The mechanical cost of this is easily measurable and definitely audible under controlled tests.
5. Worries about asymmetric stylus wear are founded. When I get cartridges in for analysis I can easily see whether they have been using too much or too little anti-skating force.
6. Watch out for high stiction in a tonearm. This will also kill your anti-skate benefits quickly. I know of one expensive arm that has a magnetic anti-skate mechanism that creates its own VERY significant stiction. The WallySkater measures this as well. More often it is in the bearings where the high stiction deteriorates the ability of the cartridge to perform at its maximum.
7. There’s more, but I’ve not the time...