Does removing anti-skating really improve sound?


I know this topic has been discussed here before, but wanted to see if others have the same experience as me. After removing the fishing line dangling weight from my tonearm I’m convinced my bass and soundstage has opened up. I doing very careful listening with headphones and don’t hear any distortion or treble harshness. So why use anti-skating at all? Even during deep bass/ loud passages no skipping of tracks. Any thoughts from all the analog gurus out there?
tubelvr1
My first 17d2 started sounding a bit lop sided after a few years, all right a few too many years even for a micro ridge stylus. The arm was a Rega RB300 and I’d believed the instruction to just set the magnetic anti-skate to the same value as the VTF. The result was not only an unevenly worn stylus but the cantilever was squed to one side and slightly twisted, I eventually got it checked under a high powered stereo microscope which confirmed the stylus wear. I set up the anti-skate on its replacement using the blank track on a test disc and that one was still straight when it was replaced. With that arm I could never hear much difference. When I replaced it with a Naim Aro with its thread and weight there was one of the possible settings that sounded livelier than the others (using solo piano music) so I used that. With my current Schöder I set it initially with the test disc and then fine tune for best dynamics, as far as I can determine by ear, which is a bit less than the test disc setting.
Millercarbon....or increase vtf slightly to eliminate mistracking.  Very many high end audiophiles don't use a/s
I am not at the engineering level of most of the contributors of this thread but let me pose a  solution that I think is quite simple and then you all can make fun of me.
The stylus travels in almost  a straight line toward the center.
The skating force is along the same line .
If you tilt)level the entire turntable in the opposite direction of the skating force, won't gravity compensate to keep the stylus at a neutral skate?

Jack, it is my understanding that the skating force is not equal across the entire stylus path from lead in to lead out... plus, even if one were to consider doing what you suggest, any sprung table, or any unipivot arm, would use the same forces of gravity to try to “correct” the tilt you intentionally created. I could be wrong, but..
Lewm, I know the numbered value dials you refer to (I’m kinda *from* the good old days ;) ). The Rega arm has a few detents in the antiskate lever which represent 0.5,1.0,1.5,2.0 (iirc), and the manual suggests choosing the value that represents your cartridge’s downforce. I fiddled with the lever on his arm until it behaved as I described in my post. It ended up being between the lowest and second lowest values on that lever for a cartridge with a 2.1 g downforce.