Twisting wire on VPI for anti skate?

Thanks for clarifying, Captain w. I'm not much familiar with VPI arms and wasn't aware that the A/S device *could* affect azimuth. Given that unexpected "feature", checking crosstalk seems like a prudent step.

With no anti skating, all was well except one album that skipped on the first track.

A/S is intended to balance stylus pressures against the opposing groovewalls during play, not to prevent the stylus from racing down the angled slope of most lead-in grooves.

The key to preventing skipping during cueing is to keep the tonearm under control (manually) until the stylus locks into a groove. It would be a major error to use A/S for that purpose, you'd end up with far too much for playing the music.

It's debatable that A/S is needed at all. Many people including me don't use it at all. The test is not how does the arm cue, the test is how does it play. If you can track the toughest passages on tight inner grooves without R channel breakup or fuzziness, you don't actually need A/S at all. You may want some depending on your sonic preferences, but that's a matter for individual experimentation and listening.

1. Anti-skating does not affect crosstalk. Checking crosstalk because you adjusted A/S is like checking the oil because you adjusted tire pressure. ;)

2. The HFN&RR test record makes a handy dust cover for the platter when the TT's not in use. It serves little other practical purpose. Mine hasn't been out of its jacket in years.

Its so-called anti-bias (anti-skating) tracks are incorrectly designed and their instructions poorly written. Thousands of people have mis-used them to set anti-bias higher than it needs to be, to the detriment of their music and perhaps their cartridges.

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In the end, one can't fine tune VTF with a scale, VTA/SRA with a microscope or anti-skating with a test record. One must train ears and brain to understand how these parameters affect the behavior of the stylus in the groove whilst playing real music.