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Harry Weisfeld Was Right All Along

I'll admit that I was skeptical when I heard Harry Weisfeld of VPI say that his JMW tonearm sounded better without any antiskating device a few years ago. All the arguments for antiskating compensation seemed plausible if not undeniable.

But today, I've seen the light. I own a Michell Orbe SE with a Wilson Benesch Act 0.5 arm and a Shelter 501 II cartridge. I dialed everything in, but still had the compunction to fiddle around with something so I removed the funky anti-skate weight from the WB. Not only does the arm behave much better (no annoying, backswing when indexing), but it actually sounds better to my ears. Smoother, more dynamic, less etched/more natural are the changes I hear. I wonder how many other arm/cartridge combinations would benefit from eschewing their anti-skate mechanisms.

While I originally thought that Harry Weisfeld was simply making excuses, in reality, he was probably just being honest. I'm sure the twisty-wire approach he now uses is a good way to implement anti-skating for those who must have it.
plato

Showing 1 response by merlinm3

merlinm3
4 posts
 
I found this thread by searching for anti-skating w/ Wilson-Benesch ACT 0.5 tonearm, and I've had results similar to Plato's. I set up a NOS WB ACT arm on an Oracle Premiere TT and set the A/S per the manual. Initially it seemed to work okay, but after about 100 hour of play the A/S force seemed to increase and the trend of the arm backswing during queing an occasional back skipping I tried to reduce the A/S setting. I could never get the adjustment for ball on string method to change enough no matter how far I set it back towards the arm pivot point. So I finally gave an remove the A/S ball and string.
Any comments on this? Is it feasible that the unipivot arm bearing wearing in defeated the need for the A/S?
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