Antiskating .... The last analog secret

Thomas,

I have a different theory. Maybe the bearings on the tonearm are sticking and causing the Stylus to drag the arm w. excessive force. I would check the arm w. a cheap MM high compliance cartridge and look for the stylus deviation as Nsgarch has mentioned. You never know. Sticking bearings could mess up many a cartridge. Never thought about that but who knows. If it is a unipivot who knows. A linear tracker might be clogged and then the stylus is dragging the arm w. too much force.

What I find weird about the cart in Thomas' pic (is it a Lyra?) is that the cantilever appears to be permanently displaced. If the suspension is OK, and the cantilever HASN'T BEEN BENT! it seems to me it should return to the centerline or close to it. I think Kirk is likely correct about the thing getting whacked ;-)

Thank you for referring to the cartridge resonance calculator Nsgarch.

Chris

All this talk of setting A/S with a test record makes sense if all you do is play test records. In the real world, the proper test is what setup sounds better on records with music, and by that measure I have found that no A/S sounds best. Keep in mind that if you use A/S, it is operating at all times, not just on those loud climaxes that resemble the torture track on your test record. And, in my experience, I can always hear when the A/S is engaged, and that isn't worth the theoretical advantage of being able to track the torture track more cleanly. I say "theoretical" because I don't have any tracking problems when I play records without A/S.

I recall what Ed Villchur, the designer of the AR table, said back in the 1960's when he was asked why his arm didn't have any A/S. He said it wasn't necessary; all you had to do was set the tracking force about 10% higher and you would get the same tracking benefit as A/S.

Dave

FWIW, the methodology I posted does result in a zero antiskating setting (with our present arm and cartridge). That's where we play every day.

Other carts have produced different results however, so IME it would over-simplify to say "no antiskating". Different stylus profiles suspension behaviors can require "some" AS to avoid mistracking. Every setup is different, as is every LP.

Agree with Salectric about test records (I think we've agreed on this before!). Quite useless for real world purposes.