Anti Skating adjustment

The skating force that acts on a stylus to cause the arm to swing towards the spindle is generated by the friction between stylus and record. It acts along an axis which is tangent to the curve at the point where the stylus meets the record.

If there is no groove, then that simply means the amount and nature of the friction force is different depending on the stylus profile and how much, or how little, it digs into the blank record surface.

In other words the stylus will skate if there is VTF and the arm has overhang, unless something stops it.

The point to remember is that the stylus is stopped from skating by the inner groove, not constrained by the outer

When playing an LP, with enough VTF the stylus will stay in the groove, but there will still be unequal downforce on each channel. With antiskate applied, these forces can be equalised. That"s the way it is.

There is always a skating force. Depending on arm length and stylus, it will usually be from 10 to 30 % of VTF. The force varies across the record, so it might change from say 20 to 30 % of VTF from outer to inner groove in the case of a 9" arm.

If, with particular set ups, users prefer not to use antiskate, then they presumably feel the trade off is worth it. This doesn't mean there is no skating force.

The centripetal force In terms of the arm, which is the rotating part in this context, not the cartridge, would be that acting from stylus to arm pivot in reaction to its opposite component which is supplied by the friction on the stylus. The remaining component of that friction force acts to rotate the arm, and is the skating force we all know and love...

Hence, with a sensitive higher end cartridge you should be able to hear a difference as skating force is removed and applied, and you can optomize it by ear (as I stated above), which is all that really matters anyway regardless of the math.

Dropping a stylus on a grooveless record is not optomizing anything with regards to the music and what you hear, and can actually be worse than using no anti-skating at all (per the info above).

Agreed. I do it by ear. With no AS at all, I hear a dominance of the R channel output and some distortion in that channel. I add AS to the point where the image seems to centralize and the distortion disappears. That endpoint usually requires only very little in the way of AS.

Lewm, do you mean dominance in the left channel with no AS? Skating force is towards the centre, inner wall of groove (left channel). AS provides a force towards the outer groove wall (right channel).
There is an interesting take on setting AS here: Guru setup method

Tobes, I was reporting what I actually did hear. But you have reminded me that on the day I made that observation, the tonearm leads may have been crossed. I just read the Vacuum State reference you kindly provided. What I hear is not quite like what they describe but the endpoint is the same. The sad message from Vacuum State is that one needs to be fiddling with AS all the time for all LPs, if the sweet spot is as elusive as they say it is.