Results from Eliminating Anti-Skate


I removed my anti-skate device from my VPI tonearm, and the improvement is nothing short of astonishing. I had anti-skate set very low since the 12 inch tonearm needs very little anti-skate. Naturally in removing the device, I had to reset the arm which may (or may not {I was very carful setting it up before}) account for the difference in sound, but with the elimination of anti-skate, there is much better dynamic contrasts, much better bass, much cleaner and clearer midrange, and sweeter highs. I think that adding anti-skate deadened the sound. Try removing the device....not just setting the gizmo to 0, but remove the entire device and have a listen. I have a VPI Superscout/Classic platter/10.5i/Benz LPS/used in balanced mode.
128x128stringreen
with my Ortofon RMG 309 tonearms I do not use any anti skate...there is none to begin with.....
I suspect my Technoarm is balanced to have some magnitude of an antiskate even if I set dial all the way to zero so as I believe with many other arms. Dialing antiskate will simply increase the action in case there are many warped records that may inflixt sliding and scratching the first track.
My preference is to place needle right on track as a habbit with antiskate set to zero. This way the stylus wear is minimized.
Stringreen,
I'm surprised it took you so long to get there considering your many customer dealings with VPI and your long-time ownership of a VPI product. Harry has always had a strong and clear stance on anti-skating - no anti-skating sounds best, period. Every VPI manual I've seen states so.
I've myself mentioned several times in various A-gon threads discussing, or touching upon, anti-skating that my Classic sounded better with no anti-skating, which is what other Classic owners I know also found. It's yesterday's news.
In the Fremer tt video, he measured the antiskate on the Scout with the Wally gizmo and found it to be way too high, even on it's lowest setting. As i recall, leaving the device on, but with no weight resulted in the correct setting. I know he didn't remove it completely, but I think the weight of the device itself was enough.
My memory was sketchy on that video. Chayro is correct. Fremer did leave the device installed but, without any weights