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Ancient AR Turntable with NO anti skate

A friend had me over to listen to his restored late 60's Acoustic Research turntable.  While listening, I noticed that the somewhat awkward looking tonearm had no anti skate.  Looking closely at the stylus assembly, it wasn't drifting or pulling toward the center spindle.  It seemed to track clean and true through the entire LP.  The arm is the original stock AR arm and couldn't be more that 8.5" or 9" in length.  I am just curious how AR pulls that off with such a short arm?  I have seen several 12" arms (Audio Technica for example) that dispense with anti skate completely but never a smaller one.  By the way, the table sounded wonderful and the cartridge was a Denon 103R.

Thanks,

Norman

 
normansizemore

Showing 1 response by cleeds

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cleeds
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stringreen
Anti skate is such a low force that it is inconsequential..most part theoretical. Actually no antiskate sounds better than yes a/s.
Certainly, many listeners prefer no antiskate, although I'm not one of them. However, to claim that antiskate force is so low as to be inconsequential is mistaken, imo. When antiskate force is considered in relation to VTF and effective tonearm mass, it is significant indeed - even if you prefer to avoid its use.
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