Antiskating .... The last analog secret

I don't fuss much at all with anti skating on my Graham Phantom.

As most of you know the 12" 33 1/3 rpm Lp is the biggest culprit here, especially as the cartridge traverse towards the centre of the Lp.

Increase the groove velocity at any given point on a Lp you then decrease the unavoidable distortions on the inner grooves of the 33 rpm.
I don't know off hand how many 12" 45 rpm Lps I have, what ever the number, it's not enough.

Stiltskin
I have a phantum also and I cannot get the antiskating to set anywhere near i feel it should be. I use the Denom Omnidisc. I have used it with all my other arms and it worked great but it just does not work on the phantum. I cannot get the distortion to stop coming from the left channel first no matter where I put the anti skating weight. My others arms included SME S type and the IV also the Graham 2.2 that worked great with the denon disk.

I cannot get the distortion to stop coming from the left channel first no matter where I put the anti skating weight.

Start by taking the AS weight off altogether. AS on top level arms and carts should be started at "zero". Adjust upward only if necessary to eliminate RIGHT channel mistracking, in TINY increments.

If you get L channel mistracking first with AS adjusted to zero, something besides AS is causing it, as I noted in my second post above dated 12-19-08 (step number 5.C).

Get rid of that Phantom piece of junk and buy yourself a Rega :-)

Nsgarch, I've always thought the line contact styli have a greater contact area than the elliptical ones. Greater contact area means more friction (although the pressure/area unit is less).

Dazz, sometimes Physics can be maddeningly counter-intuitive, can't it?! The amount of skating force produced is directly proportional to the friction developed between the stylus and the vinyl. Since the contact area of a conical/elliptical stylus is essentially zero, the VTF divided by zero = infinity. Therefore the skating force (in theory ;-) should also be infinity (which it isn't ;-) but the psi is still much higher than that of a line-contact stylus, which 'spreads' the VTF over a calculable area.

In addition to the contact-area-vs-friction issue is this point: assuming the SRA is properly set http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?eanlg&1140840022&openmine&Nsgarch&4&5&st0 a line-contact stylus will 'lock' into the groove for effortless (in theory ;-) tracing. Conical and elliptical styli kind of 'skip across the high points' of the groove modulations (I'm exaggerating for illustration ;-) which adds additional friction.

If you ever have a chance to watch an earlier model Shure MM cartridge (like a V-15 Type II) and see how much the cantilever deflects, even at one gram VTF, you'll understand where the AS = VTF standard came from.

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