MC cartridge loading: still baffled

Another way to set AS: Start with the very lowest amount that your tonearm permits, but not zero.  Gradually increase from that starting point until you have no audible tracking distortion in the R channel.  (R channel distorts with zero AS, so you want the minimal AS that eliminates any such issue.)  Others will have other views.  This is no more nor no less vague than Mijo's method.

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.

I use a blank record to adjust anti-skating. You can get a one sided recording on ebay . It works for me!!
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=anti+skating+with+a+blank+record&&view=detail&mid=B...

@millercarbon always disheartening to realize you've got a loose screw!  ;)  I'm going to try the center image test on some recordings that I know to have a dead center vocal image.  I am also OCD about speaker positioning.

Actually Lewm that is Frank Schroeder's method. I prefer to use the HI Fi News test record as it has an excellent anti skate track and both vertical and lateral resonance tracks. But I have noticed repeatedly that once I set up the tonearm with the record the tonearm drifts slowly towards the spindle on a blank record so Frank's method works. 
When using the test record you are using your ears to detect miss tracking.
I can't count the number of screws millercarbon has loose. Setting up a system is simple once you know what you are doing. The vast majority of "tweaking" is mythology. A really good tech can interpret what a client wants to hear into the system's sound.