Anti skate and tonearm damping query

NSGarch:With all cartridges except those with the stiffest suspensions, as long as you can see the cantilever from the front of the cartridge, it's quite easy to set AS force visually. I always did it that way with my MM Shure cartridges. You just lower the stylus into the groove while watching the cantilever from the front. If it deflects to the right (relative to the cartridge body) you need to add AS force. If it deflects to the left, AS needs to be reduced. No deflection of the cantilever when the stylus hits the groove means the skating force is balanced out. It could also mean that the skating force (even without AS applied) is not enough to alter the relationships in the cartridge's generator (usually because the suspension is stiff enough to resist the skating forces) and so you would HEAR no difference with or without AS applied. Nevertheless, with no AS applied, the inner groove wall of the record would wear faster than the outer groove wall

Although I don't profess to have anywhere near the expertise in these matters of several of the protagonists in this thread, Neil's statement above seems to me to be the common sense bottom line, regardless of the fact that any anti-skating setting will be a compromise to a degree that will vary with position across the record.

NSGarch: The Grace 707 is a vintage tonearm calibrated for MM cartridges, not MC which require far less AS. The rule of thumb in the MM days was that the AS should equal the VTF, and even at that, how much sideways AS force (in grams) was applied was definitely NOT the same as the actual weight on the string.

FWIW, I have over the years used several MM/MI cartridges on multiple turntables and arms (mainly a Grace F9E Ruby and a high output Grado Reference Sonata on a SOTA Sapphire with Magnepan Unitrac tonearm), and using the visual alignment method I've consistently found that the optimal setting was about 2/3 of the setting recommended by the tonearm manufacturer for the particular vtf.

Regards,
-- Al

This has certainly evolved into an interesting thread, and an educational one despite the several contradictory claims which have been made.

I've just done an experiment to try to bring it all down to a more practical level. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I have always set up anti-skating on my mm/mi cartridges so as to produce no visually detectable right or left deflection of the cantilever when it is in the record grooves, compared to when it is not in the grooves (which has always meant straight ahead, with my cartridges).

Using the high output Grado Reference Sonata which I presently have installed (compliance 20, vtf 1.5g, elliptical stylus), I carefully looked for cantilever deflection at approximately 12 different points distributed across the full length of a lightly modulated (chamber music) recording.

At no time did I see the slightest deflection.

The cartridge is mounted on a 1980's SOTA Sapphire turntable with Magnepan Unitrac tonearm. Anti-skating is set for about 2/3 of the value recommended in the tonearm manual for the 1.5g vtf (35 shot pellets in the bucket, instead of the recommended 52). As a point of interest, I had previously had a Grace F9E Ruby mounted in that arm, set up by a very good dealer using an oscilloscope, test record, and Lissajous pattern. Their setting was also about 2/3 of the recommended anti-skating for the 2g vtf used with that cartridge (52 pellets instead of 79). And I have found a similar 2/3 factor to be about right on some other turntables/arms/mm cartridges I have set up in the past.

When I have done these setup procedures in the past, modest deviations from the anti-skating settings I settled on, such as using 30 or 40 shot pellets instead of 35, produced clearly perceivable deflection.

It seems to me that this experiment, indicating no perceivable deflection at any point across the record, supports the following conclusions, as pretty much stated earlier by Neil (NSGarch):

1)While skating force may vary from one point on the record to another, the range of variation is very small compared to the nominal value of the skating force.

2)The considerable cantilever deflection that does in fact result with these or similar cartridges from using zero anti-skating force would seem simply based on common sense to be undesirable.

3)Common sense would seem to suggest that the same two conclusions apply to moving coil cartridges, except that with these cartridges the differences resulting from different anti-skating settings (including 0) may be more difficult to perceive, because of their stiffer suspensions, lower compliance, and (possibly) different stylus shapes.

Can we all agree on this, from a practical standpoint?

Regards,

-- Al