Anti-skate

"less than optimum playback on that last song" was something that I remember from my last turntable setup, but isn't that true in theory also? Jsman, is your arm the one that uses the twisting of wires for anti-skate?

Less than optimum playback is most likely due to one of 2 factors.

1. Tonearm/cartridge combination. This is the most critical match in your analog front end. Only the amplifier/speaker combination is more important in a system.

2. Cartridge alignment. Sorry to say that many hobbyists and even some dealers don't do it correctly. It's not something you knock off in 20 or 30 minutes. It's not unusual to spend 3-5 hours or even more getting it right.

Anti-skating is an "icing on the cake" setting. It's efficacy is also dependent on the tonearm and cartridge used. I have a dozen cartridges here; depending on the tonearm, some are very susceptible to minimal anti-skating changes while others seem impervious to larger settings.

Good luck.

Could someone please post a good site to dial me into anti skating? I have no clue how to set this up properly it was done by the dealer when they installed my black pearl. Any help would be appreciated.

I don't use anti-skate at all. Those who do use it set it at the same or near the VTF you are using. I find it does nothing to better my setup. The purpose of anti-skate is to balance the inward force of the tonearm which comes from the cartridge's offset angle. This force is constantly changing with the loudness of the tone, the complexity of the tone, the sylus shape, etc. It therefore cannot be accurately adjust since at each point on the record it changes. Some tonearms don't have this adjustment at all because the mechanism that provides anti-skate on the arm can often create resonances etc. The choice of coarse is yours, but as I said before, I just don't use it.

I use anti-skate and don't set it anywhere near to my VTF setting. That idea of setting AS to the same setting as VTF was/is another boat load of crap many dealers and a few manufacturers promoted because they didn't know what the hell they were doing or it just didn't matter with the cheezy arm/cart combo in use.