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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
normansizemore OP
473 posts
 
roarius,

I have reset the anti-skate yet once again, this time using a mono LP.  The results are almost identical to when I used a stereo LP.  All good.

Thank you.

Norman
normansizemore OP
473 posts
 
pryso,

Using the procedure that Al recommend and then using a mono LP as rotarius suggested I feel good about the settings on both tonearms.  The biggest improvement however was seen using this method on the SME 3009.  The settings on the Grace 747 are almost identical to those that I had previously.

Having always used anti-skate I was just surprised at how the old AR responded without any anti-skate at all. I am still kind of fascinated as that particular set up just did not appear to need it anti-skate at all.

Norman

 
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.
almarg's avatar
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almarg
8,673 posts
 
Glad I was helpful, Norman.

As a point of information, I’ve found that the procedure I described usually results in an anti-skating force corresponding to about 50% to 60% of VTF.

Best regards,
-- Al

radicalsteve's avatar
radicalsteve
146 posts
 
I have never heard a worsening of sound by applying anti-skate and it seems to improve tracking and chanel balance as the arm gets closer to the spindle. FWIW, the AR deck (which was my first ever deck) did have antiskate - it was in the original instructions to adjust the signal wires as they came out of the arm base so as to apply a lateral force as the user required
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