Mistracking

Rodman9999... a blank disc tells you nothing about anti-skate which is a function of friction...another words, when the music is loud, more anti-skate is needed than when the music is soft. When the stylus is at the beginning of the disc which in effect is turning faster than at the end, the skating problem is effected again. Forget about test records...they do nothing beneficial.

Mr. R, I concur that most tonearm manufacturer's calibrated A/S or VTF scales are of little use. I pay no more attention to those than I do to test records. The world's best tonearms don't even have such scales, for good reason.

The goal is simple: optimize the behavior of the stylus in the groove when playing music. This is all we care about (or at least all the OP cares about).

The solution is simple: adjust for the conditions we care about, ignore everything else (including blank, ungrooved surfaces, which - as Stringeen noted - do not resemble the conditions we care about).

everything needs to be verified aurally

Hear! Hear! This is the essential step. All else can be dispensed with, saving time, money and distraction.

I find it interesting that both Shure(a company that MAY know just a LITTLE BIT about cartridges, and their function on a record surface) and Nautilus(which pressed some of the highest quality discs in the 70's and 80's), both included blank 'Anti-Skate' tracks, on their analog test records. I can't say much for Stereo Review's magazine(and never missed it), but their Model SRT 14 test record includes an excellent anti-skate test, consisting of two simultaneous tones of 300 and 303Hz. The phase of the tones varies between 0 and 360 degrees about 3 times each second. At 0 degrees; the groove cut is completely lateral, at 180; completely vertical. The overall level of the signal starts out low and increases. To make a long story short: Positioning oneself equidistant from both speakers; you listen for mistracking(a buzz which will start at some recording level) from one or the other speaker, and adjust your anti-skate in the other direction, until the sound occurs simultaneously, in both channels. Utilizing one of the blank tracks, from the first two test records mentioned, then verifying the result(which was never far off) with the 'SRT 14' test, saved me a lot of time, when I was in the business. And- I never had a customer complaint, regarding the results.

No test records here.

Just a pair of experienced ears.

HEAR, HEAR!