How To Control The Eager Beaver

This may be just my tainted observation, but my tangential player tracks warps just fine...  Now, this could be a pleasant side effect from not needing anti-skate required with a pivoting arm.

Any thoughts?  Curious minds, all that....

Pre-thanks, J 

My only thought is that "just fine" is not quantitative.  Most of us would say the same for our pivoted tonearms.  Anyway, you raise an interesting question: what difference does it make tracking warps with a pivoted vs a tangential tonearm? Why would skating force and the application of AS make any difference?  Answer for me is I don't know.

@lewm 

When you wrote AS I read A$.

There should be no skating force with a linear tracking (tangential) tone arm, except some side force has to drag it across the record. I am somewhat familiar with the Holbo deck which has both an air-bearing for the tone arm and another for the platter.

@asvjerry

Traversing a vertical warp momentarily increases the tracking force, then decreases it as the stylus goes downhill.  With a pivoted tone arm, the skating force is proportional to the tracking force.  In the extreme when the stylus gets airborne, it will be pulled away from the center by the anti-skating device, which tangential tracking arms do not need

No, you are correct, RB, there should be no skating force with a tangential tracker.  The only side force would be to overcome any friction in the carriage, and there is always some of that, which is why the best LT tonearms in my opinion float the carriage on an air bearing.

And you've answered the question.  Warps throw the balance of skating force vs AS out of whack, momentarily. I'd never thought to worry about that, so I won't start now.

The issue with tangential tracking arms of the air bearing or ultra low friction variety (e.g., Clearaudio) is that the arm does not have the mechanical advantage of a pivot/fulcrum, so considerable force is imparted on the stylus/cantilever to pull the arm assembly sideways across the record. 

In some cases that force is much higher than skating forces and there has been reported damage to cartridges.  There are ways to make pivoted tangential tracking arms.  The earliest used a sensor to detect when the arm is no longer tangent to the grooves and a motor to then move the arm/pivot assembly to again achieve tangency.

There are modern versions based on Thales circles, that has a conventional arm attached to a base that rotates to move the whole arm into a new position to achieve tangency (Reed T5, Shroeder LTA), these arms achieve tangency and virtually no skating forces while minimizing other adverse consequences.  

There are also straight arms that have not offset angle at the headshell.  The tracking geometry is WAY off with these arms, but, skating force is substantially less than that of arms with an offset angle.  I have heard some examples and I was quite surprised that the lack of any attempt to get close to tangency of the cantilever to the groove did not seem to hurt performance much.