Tonearms with no anti-skate adjustment

dover

If the arm is level, then moving the pivot point up or down moves the counterweight closer to the pivot ...

It isn’t clear what you’re claiming here. It doesn’t make sense if what you mean is that raising the arm brings the counterweight closer to the pivot. The distance between pivot and counterweight will remain the same if all you do is raise the arm.

You can use a VTF scale to confirm that if you raise a statically balanced arm, you’ll increase VTF and if you lower the arm, you’ll decrease VTF. That’s easy to measure.

To be fair, the VTF doesn't really change much, based on my measurements.

I have not used anti-skate since I got my vpi classic 2 with the JWM-10.5.  I did use it on pro-ject table with a 9 inch tonearm.  If you need it, use it.

@lewm 
@cleeds 
If you put your thumb on the cartridge end of the tonearm and move the back of the arm up and down ( like VTA adjustment ), the counterweight tracks an ARC realtive to your thumb.
The point I made was that If the arm starts at level then the centre of mass is the furtherest from your thumb. Moving the back of the arm up and down at the back will move the centre of mass forward towards the mounting position because the counterwieght moves in an ARC.
Therefore IF you start with a level arm, the VTF will increase with either up or down motion because the centre of mass moves towards the cartridge in both instances.
 If you cant follow this then I cant help you any further, sorry.

Dear HDM,
Brilliant post! I didn’t even know this one existed!
I know Werner from PFM and he is a very good guy. His knowledge of electronics, digital & analogue, is even more impressive.

What is interesting about his measurements is that that the “underslung” COG examples all show the VTF increase, which is basically what we’ve been arguing about.
Cheers!