RS-3 owners: Seeking anti-skate help


Hello - I recently acquired the RS-3 headshell and attached it to my SME 3009 series II (unimproved). I followed the directions from the dealer to the letter and the sound, to date, is nothing shy of riveting, honestly. I am curious, however, if anyone with a similar set-up can comment on whether or not you are using the anti-skate rig. It is not 100% clear that the headshell completely compensates for the table's wanton tendency to pull the arm inwards, so I have set it up currently with the anti-skate weight in place, yet was wondering about the protocol of others, or if there is an official word on this?

Thank you for your help
nycwine1
Juliejoma you have misunderstood skating force. It has nothing to do with the angle of the headshell except that this angle attempts to follow the offset of the pivot.

The stylus reaction force is a vector. The direction of the vector is a tangent to the groove. The vector does not pass throught the pivot of a pivoted arm. The distance between the vector and the pivot forms a torque arm with the stylus friction. This torque is the skating force. The length of the torque arm is equal to the linear offset of the tonearm (about 95mm in Baerwald's alignment) and this is nearly constant regardless of the angle of the headhsell / cartridge.
All well and good, Quiddity, but you seem to have misunderstood the wonders of the RS arm :-)

I can't blame anyone for doing this. You have to use the silly thing. I wouldn't have believed it either. Dave
'Nycewine1', did your dealer mention anything about the RS-3 being designed only for straight tonearms? I only mention it because a poster on another thread claimed it to be true.

I'd love to try one myself-btw, on what table, and with which cart, are you using it?
Hey Dave, I'm TRYING to understand the wonders of the RS labs approach to design, but so far I've had no joy as no-one has been able to explain how they work. Several explanations have been advanced but so far they've all been proven wrong.

For me "just listen to it" doesn't cut it, if a device produces good results I want to know why. By that I mean why the designer dreamt it up and how he made the decisions he made.
Good luck in your quest. I had something of the same feelings, as I read the impenetrable installation and operating instructions on this arm, plus Art Dudley's rather mystified review in the old Listener magazine, finally decided they were never going to make any sense and just relaxed and enjoyed its musicality and sonics.

But not its ergonomics. You need a lot steadier hand and better eye-hand coordination than I have to subdue this thing. Dave