Both loading and anti-skate are set by ear. I only just recently learned the difference a small adjustment can make. Anti-skate on my Origin Live Conqueror is a ball hanging from a thread attached to a lever arm. A little set screw lets you slide and lock it in.
I’m guessing somewhere along the line that screw got loose and it slid out resulting in increased anti-skate.
Hard to say. Its not like there’s markings or anything.
Anyway, it never got far enough off for anything as obvious as breakup. I’ve always thought of that as the marker, and so assumed mine was fine.
Until gradually over the last few months I was getting this funny feeling the image was ever so slightly right shifted. Some vocals that I was sure had been rock solid dead center seemed just a tad to the right. I’m a freaking OCD stickler with speaker placement so that’s not it.
I started thinking. Its to the right. The right channel is the right side of the groove. Even without mistracking, too much pressure would have the coil ever so slightly off center. Well you can think or you can find out.
I found out. A little less and not only did the image shift that few inches, it locked in a good deal more solid too. Not like it was ever bad before. Far from it. Which is why I never tried before. Never, ever would have dreamed of setting anti-skate by ear like this before.
Its amazing the extent to which these things can be tuned with enough time and tweaking.