MC cartridge loading: still baffled

The phono preamp. Having adjustable loading is great as you can play around to see what you think sounds best in your system. I would trust Ayre's suggestions on their equipment.
As for anti Skate, never follow the tonearm's instruction. You adjust the anti skate by test record or by the Schroeder method. When you put the stylus down in the run out area between the grooves it should VERY slowly drift toward the spindle. Not using any anti skate is improper and you can see this easily. Defeat your anti skate mechanism. Viewing the cantilever from the front use your lift to lower the stylus into the groove and watch where the cantilever goes. It will deviate towards the outside of the record as the tonearm leans heavily on the inside groove (left Channel.) What you are doing is increasing the tracking force on the left channel and decreasing it on the right. The right channel now starts miss tracking early. You can hear this effect easily with a test record. This also increases wear on both the stylus and the record. When you set the anti skate correctly you will notice when you put the stylus down that it does not deviate at all.  

@mijostyn thanks for the reply!

Concerning the anti-skate setting, using music as my test (not a test record), I get no right channel distortion even with the anti skate turned off!  Turntable is absolutely level.  Using the run-out  area test, sure, the arm skates when lowered into this area but tracks fine when allowed to enter the run-out groove at the end of a record.  I finally settled on an anti-skate setting ~ 0.5 just to have some counter force but using test records with atypical modulations might be overkill.  If I hear any break up coming from the right channel (outer groove wall distortion then I will adjust it higher but for now, I am quite content using this lower setting.

I should also add that I do not see any deflection of the cantilever when the arm is lowered into a groove.  However, the cantilever is not very compliant so this may be a factor.  I am comfortable using real music as a test and listening for possible break up if the antiskate setting needs to be adjusted higher.  I acknowledge the possibility that I might be wearing the stylus or inner groove unevenly.