Antiskating .... The last analog secret

I have always known antiskating to be an aid to help the stylus stay between the grooves so that you can extract the information correctly. That along with the correct weight on the stylus tip should keep distortion down and give you a better sound presentation as well as a blacker background. Remember the first AR turntable tonearm. No antiskate at all. And there were many others.

The stylus sits in a valley of two 45 degree angle grooves. If the stylus rides the left side of the groove or the right side of the groove it is known to produce distortion *groove modulation distortion). You can clearly see it on an oscilliscope when this occurs. When the stylus rides in the center of those two grooves your antiskate should be correctly set up. Therefore if you use a smooth surface to make the adjustment the antiskate if working properly will not move inward or outward and it should be pretty accurate. I have used this method for years and I don't hear any distortion or noise other than damage that has been done to the vinyl before I obtained it (used records mostly). That can be seen under a microscope as well. I don't like buying vinyl from DJ's that track above 2 grams. Sometimes you can see the groove damage or groove wear and you will hear it too.

I don't know if anyone does this but when I owned my first tonearm with a string antiskate mechanism I tried this and it worked. It may not be 100% but the only way to get 100% is to have a microscope and ocilliscope. I have never heard of right antiskate. The stylus can ride the groove on the left(inward groove) or the right(outward groove).

Basically, I don't use it. It is never correct over the whole record. I agree with Harry at VPI about this. Tracking weight is not the critical factor in record wear. The quality of the polish of the diamond in the stylus is the determining factor. Decades ago an experiment was done in Britain where a record was played several hundred times by a high quality cartridge tracking at 3.5 grams. An examination under a microscope showed no record wear. I don't dispute that buying DJ LPs is chancy , but it is not the tracking weight in itself that damages the vinyl. I very seldom track below 2 grams and have records that I have had since the 60s that are in great shape. Too little weight is always worse than too much.

Great photo, Thomas. Very likely caused by many hours of play with excessive anti-skating.

Calibration with a blank surface is not always the 100% solution.

Calibration with a blank surface is NEVER the right solution, unless you play a lot of LP's with blank surfaces.

Skating force is the product of the stylus' friction in the groove times the (imaginary) lever arm, whose length is the distance between two parallel lines: one, the L/R center-line of the cartridge and the other, a line parallel to that one but drawn through the main vertical axis of the tonearm's rotational main bearing. This lever arm distance remains the same no matter where on the record the stylus is; and unless the stylus' friction in the groove varies from outside to inside grooves, the skating force remains constant (although it's higher on loud passages due to more groove friction ;-)

If your tonearm has no headshell offset, nor an 'S' curved armtube, then no skating force will develop and you don't need any antiskating force. This is OK for 12" and longer tonearms which don't have much tracking error anyway.

The easiest way to check anti-skate (without an oscilloscope ;-) is to just look at the cantilever dead on as you lower the tonearm to the record. If just as the stylus goes into the groove, the cantilever shifts to the outside (relative to the cartridge body) you need more AS. If it shifts to the inside, you have too much. Note: (a.) This takes a little practice and a lot of light. (b.) It's easier to do with high compliance (MM) cartridges than with low compliance (MC) cartridges because squishier suspensions (MM) make the cantilever shifting easier to see. However after a little practice, it IS possible w/ MC cartridges. And anyway, this is to get you in the ballpark; final adjustments (no matter what method you use) will have to be made by ear. (Tip: try doing your listening tests with a mono record.)

Although the visual (+listening) method described above is as good as any I've tried, anti-skate adjustments render very subtle results. So it's exremely important that all other parameters be on the nose; including perfect azimuth, which is especially important when trying to find the correct AS force.
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Nice to have you back with your wise advises Nsgarch !