Anti skate and tonearm damping query

Al, thanks for the reinforcement. You obviously have more insight/experience than you want to claim ;-)

Tonarm, I really have nothing further to say to you ;-(

Neil

Hi guys,
this developing argument reminds me somehow of what Søren Kierkegaard (19th century Danish philosopher) who once said: "If you get married you'll regret it, if you don't get married you'll also regret it, and if get married or do not get married you'll regret it.

Oh, he also said: "If you hang yourself you'll regret it, and if you don't hang yourself.... :-)

Now replace 'anti-skate' for the 'married' or 'hanged' bit, and see what it looks like...
I'd say: you regret it :-)

Greetings,
Axel

Nsgarch, I have no idea where you got the idea that the Grace was used with MM cartridges, it was sold as a package with the Linn LP 12 and Supex cartridge in England and I sold it with the 901 Supex over here. I also have no idea where you got the idea that MM and MC required different settings, I have followed the literature since the early 60s and never heard this. We are talking about a mechanical system here, how does the physical force pushing the arm know whether it is a MM or MC. Could you tell me where you got this idea? I have sold tables and cartridges for over 30 years and I never saw a mention of different compensation for MM and MC by any manufacture of either MM or MC. It was also applied SOELY on the basis of tracking weight, the test I quoted simply said that the bias force was off by a factor of two. This test was done by people whose knowledge of the subject far exceeds that of either you or I so you have either discovered something unknown to others or only true in your universe. Otherwise I would think arm manufactures such as SME would make some mention of it.

Stan, the tonearm manufacturers are indeed now catching up with the essential differences between MC and MM cartrige requirements. Or to be more specific, the difference in the tonearm settings required by cartridges with line contact styli and previous types of styli. One example of this response by manufacturers is the SME IV.V which is made specifically with MC-with-line-contact-styli in mind. It's like an SME V, but comes without silicon damping (unnecessary for MC cartridges' stiff suspensions) and without hairspring VTF adjustment (also unnecessary for cartridges tracking in the 2 gram range.) Further, no current manufacturer of quality tonearms is silly enough to assert that the user just blindly set the antiskating force scale indicator to match the VFT setting. They all know better by now ;-)

As I indicated previously, the reason MC cartridges, or more accurately, cartridges with line contact styli, require so little antiskate compensation, is because they create so little skating force to begin with. Simply put, for each gram of VTF, a line contact stylus "drags" in the groove just a fraction of the amount that a conical or elliptical stylus would. And since 'skating force' is a product (read: multiplication result) of stylus friction drag TIMES the length of a (virtual) lever arm which is created by headshell offset angle. Therefore, lower stylus drag produces less skating force with a given tonearm.

If a tonearm has no headshell offset angle (like some of the old 12 -16 inch transcription tonearms) then no skating force is produced because there is no (virtual) lever arm for the stylus "drag" to act upon. However, with long tonearms, you still pay a small price in increased tracking error and a big price in tonearm resonance and inertial momentum (the tonearm wants to keep going UP after a record warp ;-)

If you want to have your cake and eat it too, get a linear tracking tonearm - no skating force, no tracking error, stylus rake angle (SRA) adjustable while the record is playing - and they do sound fabulous, I've had one. BUT, they ARE a hassle, needing (usually) an air pump, and constant checking. Or, as you might also remember from the 60's, the goin' up just ain't worth the comin' down!

Dear Stan, you are of course right. We have seen - and still have... - MCs with VTF around 1.2 to 1.5 (v.d. Hul among others). MC do NOT have ad decretum lower compliance than MMs. The skating force is - among others - a result of VTF, offset of the stylus towards the groove wall and total contact area of the stylus. Its becomes less with increased effective length and resulting decrease of tangential error. It is null at any zero error point and becomes more and less with increasing tangential error and decreasing to wards the next zero point.
Simple model.
The force is never constant - and should therefor be addressed by an inverse force which is itself variable in conjunction with the tangential curve of the given tonearm.
Not really complex - it just needs more than a plain stupid constant anti-force.
But nothing in our days is so clear as not to be neglected and denied by some.
I am positive that maybe Raul in his new upcoming tonearm-design will address this issue.
Of course we can always simplify things and we see a strong movement in this direction ever since the last 2 generations.
Why ?
Because it makes things cheaper to produce.
More profit made - less brain needed.
Simple story indeed.