Anti Skating adjustment


Hi, I was reading a response to a thread concerning anti skating adjustment. I was hoping someone could give me some advise. I just recently purchased a retipped Monster Cable Genesis 1000MkII while I send my Sigmas Genesis 2000MkII for a new stylus. Anyway, when lowering the new cartridge down on a protractor the cantilever deflects left. I have checked and recheck table balance and azimuth in the horizontal plane. All appears ok. The antiskating seems not to affect the deflection while lowering the cartridge onto the protractor. I have adjust antiskating with the Cardas "balancing plateau" track as well as a Hi Fi News test record. The antiskating adjustment does impact the tonearm movement when rotating a record but not when just lowering the cartridge onto the protractor. When lowering onto a record the deflection is still there but less noticable.
The retipping appears to maybe have affected the compliance of the cartridge. My turntable is an extensively modified AR ES-1 with all of George Merrill mods with an delrin/acrylic clamp and aluminum periphery ring, the tonearm is an Audioquest PT-9.
yesfan3942

Showing 2 responses by nrenter

My anti skate force is about 1/10th of my VTF.

There is not a single "correct" anti-skate force. It is always an approximation that gives "better" performance given a constantly changing set of variables. Yes, listening is the best way to set anti-skate force, but it isn't the most helpful advice.

There are many "tricks" to help best determine this approximation. My personal favorite is steady the cartridge near the outer edge of a blank CD-R (similar to the blank LP method). I believe this is the method suggested by both Peter Ledermann and Frank Schroder (but my espresso hasn't kicked in, so my memory may be foggy).
Not valid? If you say so.

But, back to the OP, you be better off consulting a tonearm designer and a cartridge manufacturer than an audio forum on anti-skate. You'll get 11 opinions from 10 members.