For VPI Unipivot Owners, do you use antiskating?

I'm with Al. Plus, "listen" for distortion that is worse in one channel vs the other. I sometimes get this wrong, but R channel distortion indicates maybe too little AS. L channel distortion the opposite. In my experience, listening is an even more sensitive test than looking. Nowadays I am using high compliance cartridges, even a high-ish compliance LOMC (Ortofon MC2000). There is no perceptible cantilever deflection; nor do I hear L vs R distortions, using my no-brainer formula of "the lowest amount of AS that the tonearm provides for". Doug et al took the low limit down lower with the TP tonearm by substituting its AS weight with a few rubber grommets, at one point in this odyssey. I follow this policy also with the L07J tonearm on my Kenwood L07D, a Reed 2A, and the Dynavector DV505 tonearm.

Thanks, Lew. FWIW, the procedure I use is:

1)I increase anti-skating until deflection to the left (toward the center of the record) becomes just barely perceptible. This is done with the stylus positioned approximately in the middle of the rotating record. I note the setting. In the case of my arm, the "setting" is the number of tiny metal pellets that are placed in a bucket.

2)I decrease anti-skating until deflection to the right becomes just barely perceptible, with the stylus positioned at approximately the same location on the record. I note the setting.

3)I set anti-skating to the mid-point between those two values.

4)I verify that no perceivable deflection occurs at other points on the record.

5)I declare victory :-)

As a rough ballpark, I have found that raising or lowering the resulting number of pellets by something like 15% will result in easily perceivable deflection, symmetrically in the two directions.

Best regards,
-- Al

Dear Adeep,
You should try AS. It seems an obvious thing to say but before tinkering with AS try to get the platter as 100% level as possible in all axes.
With some suspended tables this is easier said than done. I've seen suspended tables visibly tilt/oscillate under the influence of belt pull (either due to poor weight distribution/balance of the platter and its add-ons or forces acting on the sprung assembly or poor levelling of the plinth or all 3).
An unsuspended mass damped T/T is much easier in this respect.

Eyeballing cantilevers is not my preference, although I usually do a cursory check on the attitude of the cartridge during queuing at the run-in groove. Old advice was that the cantilever should remain stationary and wait to be picked up or it should drift slightly outwards? (Either on the innermost blank area or the outermost - they used to cite 5mm/sec outward drift). This is no longer the case as that would be considered to be over-compensation.
Listening is easily the best way to confirm this. My tonearm doesn't lend itself to active adjustment during play so I do it in stages.

Important to remember that strong bass signals tend to be encoded equally in both L-R channels. If AS is wrong then the cart will tend to ride up the slope of either channel. This is tantamount to a sort of channel-specific incorrect VTF, even if it is not blatantly mistracking.
You will hear L-R frequency balance changes as you alter AS.
To illustrate this to non-believers in the past I've actually done digital needledrops showing the effect of different settings.
Hope this helps.

Moonglum...surely the sound will change with an increase or decrease of a/s....you're dragging the stylus closer/farther to the magnet or coil. No one can control the a/s that's needed or preferred because the force is constantly changing. Why don't you listen to your cartridge without a/s and let it breathe. If you don't like it, put your a/s in play again.

03-12-15: Stringreen
No one can control the a/s that's needed or preferred because the force is constantly changing.

In my experience (as described earlier), all of it involving MM and MI cartridges, as I had mentioned a change in anti-skating force of about 15% from the value arrived at per the procedure I described will result in EASILY perceivable deflection of the cantilever from its normally straight-ahead position. Yet at the same time, as I said earlier, once I have adjusted anti-skating force per that procedure there is NO perceivable deflection at ANY point on the record (apart from deflections that may be caused by large groove modulations, of course).

That would seem to say something about the DEGREE to which skating force varies during the course of the record.

Regards,
-- Al