Ancient AR Turntable with NO anti skate

Al & rotarius,

I followed your very well written concise instructions last night and was able to dial in the Grace 747 and for the first time the SME 3009. I am really happy about this.

The Denon 103 has a conical stylus, so given rotarius remarks is there something else that I should do?

Thank you!
Norman

Norman, your final check/adjustment should be with mono LP to make sure you have even output from both channels and music is coming from the central region between speakers.  Assuming that your room acoustics don't produce an uneven balance to begin with of course.

Norman, it sounds like you found your solution, good to see that.

I don’t know how early manufacturers became aware of skating? If I remember correctly several arm/table combinations included separate recommended settings for conical and elliptical styli. Also, having owned a few Shure cartridges I would always purchase one of their test records for each model. Those (all?) included a blank (ungroved) band to set anti-skate, something I dutifully followed. But later, like Al, I read why that was not accurate. I also remember reading something from Thorens or Ortofon that the force does indeed change as the stylus tracks the radius of the record. At that point, not being an engineer, I began setting the anti-skate at approximately 80% of the VTF value and quit worrying about it. ;^)

Also many know that Harry Weisfeld believes anti-skate is unnecessary and initially didn’t include it on his VPI arms, other than by "twisting" the connecting wiring. Later on he offered it as an accessory, I assumed due to consumer demand.

roarius,

I have reset the anti-skate yet once again, this time using a mono LP.  The results are almost identical to when I used a stereo LP.  All good.

Thank you.

Norman

pryso,

Using the procedure that Al recommend and then using a mono LP as rotarius suggested I feel good about the settings on both tonearms.  The biggest improvement however was seen using this method on the SME 3009.  The settings on the Grace 747 are almost identical to those that I had previously.

Having always used anti-skate I was just surprised at how the old AR responded without any anti-skate at all. I am still kind of fascinated as that particular set up just did not appear to need it anti-skate at all.

Norman