Tonearms with no anti-skate adjustment


I am in recent possession of a Grace 704 uni-pivot tonearm, which has no anti-skate adjustment. This is not optimal IMO, but should I really be worried?
128x128jdjohn

Showing 2 responses by millercarbon

Full (if late) disclosure, most of what I wrote above is straight from Michael Fremer. One of his several hour plus talks on turntable setup. Forget which one. Anyone wants to really understand the subject could do worse than to watch them all. Unfortunately you really do need to watch them all, at least if you’re new, because while he’s a great talker he does have the somewhat detracting habit of meandering and jumping and looping back and putting a somewhat different perspective on things depending on which video you see. But again, you could do worse than watch them all.

Ferris:

You’re still here?

Its over.

Go home.

Go!
Not based on what you’ve said so far, no.

The one way to be sure is by listening for mistracking. Specifically, mistracking much more often in one channel than another. Occasional mistracking in one channel or the other you can disregard, at least as far as anti-skate is concerned. But the purpose of anti-skate is to equalize stylus force side to side.

Anti-skate pulls the arm to the outside, away from the spindle. The side of the record groove closest to the spindle carries the left channel. If you’re hearing much more mistracking in the left channel then it means you have too much anti-skate. If you hear mistracking more in the right channel then stylus isn’t pressing against the outside enough and you need more anti-skate.

That’s how you tell. And contrary to what you will probably hear there is no one right level of anti-skating to set. That is because the force anti-skating is intended to counteract varies across the record, and varies by how modulated the grooves are (loud passages) and varies by tracking force.

Even if you do hear a little breakup in one channel that is still not decisive, for all the above factors. You need to pay attention and determine if there’s a consistent pattern.

Anti-skate is like most things analog imperfect and a matter of trade-offs. Some we get to make. Some the designer. You see which way the designer of your arm went. Are you sure you want to be second-guessing him? Based on Audiogoners advice?

I wouldn’t. I would listen to my rig. Let my own ears decide.