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Anti Skating adjustment

Hi, I was reading a response to a thread concerning anti skating adjustment. I was hoping someone could give me some advise. I just recently purchased a retipped Monster Cable Genesis 1000MkII while I send my Sigmas Genesis 2000MkII for a new stylus. Anyway, when lowering the new cartridge down on a protractor the cantilever deflects left. I have checked and recheck table balance and azimuth in the horizontal plane. All appears ok. The antiskating seems not to affect the deflection while lowering the cartridge onto the protractor. I have adjust antiskating with the Cardas "balancing plateau" track as well as a Hi Fi News test record. The antiskating adjustment does impact the tonearm movement when rotating a record but not when just lowering the cartridge onto the protractor. When lowering onto a record the deflection is still there but less noticable.
The retipping appears to maybe have affected the compliance of the cartridge. My turntable is an extensively modified AR ES-1 with all of George Merrill mods with an delrin/acrylic clamp and aluminum periphery ring, the tonearm is an Audioquest PT-9.
yesfan3942
ptmconsulting
1,000 posts
 
Hence, with a sensitive higher end cartridge you should be able to hear a difference as skating force is removed and applied, and you can optomize it by ear (as I stated above), which is all that really matters anyway regardless of the math.

Dropping a stylus on a grooveless record is not optomizing anything with regards to the music and what you hear, and can actually be worse than using no anti-skating at all (per the info above).
lewm
13,019 posts
 
Agreed. I do it by ear. With no AS at all, I hear a dominance of the R channel output and some distortion in that channel. I add AS to the point where the image seems to centralize and the distortion disappears. That endpoint usually requires only very little in the way of AS.
tobes's avatar
tobes
436 posts
 
Lewm, do you mean dominance in the left channel with no AS? Skating force is towards the centre, inner wall of groove (left channel). AS provides a force towards the outer groove wall (right channel).
There is an interesting take on setting AS here: Guru setup method
lewm
13,019 posts
 
Tobes, I was reporting what I actually did hear. But you have reminded me that on the day I made that observation, the tonearm leads may have been crossed. I just read the Vacuum State reference you kindly provided. What I hear is not quite like what they describe but the endpoint is the same. The sad message from Vacuum State is that one needs to be fiddling with AS all the time for all LPs, if the sweet spot is as elusive as they say it is.
tobes's avatar
tobes
436 posts
 
I haven't tried all the 'guru' setup tips - and I definitely don't adjust VTA with the precision suggested in the article - but I found the antiskate adjustment method useful.
I've found it important to adjust antiskate and azimuth in an iterative manner. As I dial in azimuth I find I can reduce antiskate and the soundspace becomes bigger, more cohesive and the music more compelling and alive. Very small adjustments to azimuth make a difference IME (or perhaps that's due to the stylus shape I'm using?).
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