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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 3 responses by totem395

totem395
196 posts
 
If by "Ancient" you mean as late as the mid 50's most every arm had no
anti-skate, including Ortofon's and the first SME series 1 3012,
and 3009's. Although was later available as an option [series 1] 



totem395
196 posts
 
pryso
If I remember correctly several arm/table combinations included separate recommended settings for conical and elliptical styli.
In particular Thorens used the graduated anti skate scale dependent 
on stylus shape, along with their no string and weight design.

TD145, TD160 and others.
totem395
196 posts
 
Doing a little more reading on the first SME arms that had no anti-skate an early reviewer 1960 commented that he loved the arm but not the fact it came with no skating compensation.

It was suggested to "tilt" the table slightly with the resulting compensation added. A simple fix from a time when you were left
to deal with concerns however one could..

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