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
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
Thanks,
Norman