Is my anti-skating too strong.


I’m trying to adjust the alignment of the Ortofon Black Quintet cartridge on my Music Hall mmf 9.3 turntable.  When I put the stylus down on the alignment protractor, the tone arm pulls to the outer edge of the turntable.   Should I disable anti skating when doing alignment or is it set too strong?  Obviously haven’t done this too often.
Also, when listening to the anti skating track on The Ultimate Analogue Test LP, there is noticeable distortion at the end of the track which indicates too much or too little anti skating.  Any guidance here?
udog
Beats me how you guys can argue over such a simple and obvious bit of physics.
Ledermann's explanation is correct.

He mentions using the unmodulated run-out area of the record to observe scating activity.
This is better done with an entire unmodulated side of a record.  These are often present on MFSL 45rpm reissues.  Drop the stylus at various positions on the revolving record surface and observe how strongly and quickly the skating force pulls the arm towards the centre.  Then add anti-skating and re-test.  Adjust the anti-skating force until the best result is obtained in maintaining the arm most nearly stationary at different points and you will have the best amount of anti-skating to equalise the forces on each side of the groove.

Ledermann mentioned in passing that parallel tracking arms are complex and expensive and kind of excluded them on that basis.  I agree that many don't work very reliabily and are difficult to set up and maintain settings.  My Simon Yorke Aeroarm (an extremely rare piece I am fortunate to have, thank you Simon) works very well and cost one-quarter or less of the price of the top pivoted arms that are now $50,000 and more.  I know which I'd rather have.

I use the unmodulated side to set the lateral levelling of my plinth on the fly using a fine screw adjustment, so that the arm remains stationary on a revolving record.  Lateral levelling is critical for parallel trackers and this method is waaayyy more accurate than using a spirit level.
You should NOT have the antiskate on or connected while making alignment adjustments. That is last step. In adjusting your anti skate, find a record with lots of dead wax near the label. Place stylus in the dead wax and watch how quickly or slowly the stylus moves toward the label/spindle. It should move gracefully, not too quickly and not too slowly. Usually the recommended position on the rod will coincide with your cartridge tracking force. The very outer rung is the most antiskating, while the rung nearest to the pivot is the least. So, you only have three options as there are only three rungs to hang the fishing line from.

Also, listen for distortion in right and left speaker...if your hearing it in the right, you have too much antiskating...if in left, you have too little...
@bpoletti - Thank you very much for the link. I found Ledermann’s explanation very informative. It’s funny how simple good science usually is. I used it last night to easily reset the anti-skate on my P6. 
@clearthinker - I’m pretty sure scating is what one of the other posters was doing in the thread, as usual ;-). But seriously, totally agree that an unmodulated side would greatly simplify and increase the accuracy of Ledermann’s process. I went to the MFSL website but was unable to quickly discern which records would resemble your remark. Could you name a few that have an unmodulated side?  BTW, I was unfamiliar with that website. I can see that they will be separating me from a considerable amount of my $s going forward, so not sure whether to thank you or curse you for that nugget ;-). 

Thanks,

Matt
Of course Michael Fremer totally disagrees with Peter Ledermann and Frank Schroder. However, Michael Fremer is wrong when he asserts the friction on a groove less record is lower than in a normal groove. It is higher.
@clearthinker,  The aeroarm is just as bad as any any other air bearing arm. It's horizontal effective mass is way too high. This causes the cantilever to oscillate side to side. Damping helps somewhat but still. You can prove this to yourself. Find a record in your collection that was drilled off center. Play it and watch the cantilever it will move side to side. It may be hard to see if you are using a very stiff cartridge like a Koetsu but then you will have a vertical mismatch. With a properly tuned pivotal arm you will never see the cantilever move unless the bearings are shot. If you are determined to have a tangential arm check out the Schroder LT or the Reed 5T, they side step this problem. 
The best way to set anti skate is to measure it. It should be 10% of the VTF +- 1%. The only two ways I know to do this are with the WallySkater
(very expensive) or my Gizmo (dirt cheap, see picture my system page)
I will not chase you for patent infringement if you decide to make one yourself. The only important part you have to buy is the instrumentation bearing. Ceramic is the best. Otherwise, you could make it with some scrap wood, a scroll saw and a drill. If you want to wait I will probably sell it to a company like MoFi once the patent is pending.
There appears to be some confusion about the cause of skating force.  If the cause is primarily the cantilever being not tangent to radius of the record (i.e., cantilever to perpendicular to a line drawn from the spindle to the point of contact, then skating force would be near zero at the two null points and would reverse direction as the null point is crossed; that does not happen.  Skating force comes from the stylus dragging in the groove.  That force is largely along the line of the cantilever (very slightly to the left or right of directly on line when not at the null point).  Of course it also varies from directly along the cantilever when playing different parts of a waveform, but still, it is primarily along the line of the cantilever.  The drag is pulling the cantilever.  If the cantilever is pointed directly at the tonearm pivot, there would be no left or right bias to such pull.  But, that is not the case because the headshell (and therefore the cartridge) is at a very substantial offset angle and points far to the right of the pivot.  This is the cause of the skating force.

You can demonstrate this for yourself by pretending your arm is a tonearm.  Put your elbow on a table (this is the tonearm pivot.  Hold your arm and wrist straight out and now pull on your middle finger (this is the equivalent of drag pulling on the stylus and cantilever).  Your arm should go nowhere.  Now bend your wrist at an angle (like the kink in your tonearm) and pull straight back on your middle finger.  Your arm will move inward, just like a tone arm does when tracking a record.

Ledermann's technique is not meant to exactly simulate skating force drag.  It is something he developed as a proxy for roughly estimating the amount of antiskating force that should be applied.  ALL approaches are just rough compensation, which is better than nothing, but far from perfect.  It is also very easy to apply.  He makes the case that using test records to find the point where the cartridge mis-tracks in one channel to determine whether to apply more or less antiskating force optimizes the setting only under extreme conditions, but, those conditions happen very briefly so the rest of the time one is applying too much antiskating.  I think his approach makes sense.  A similar approach is suggested by a cartridge manufacturer (I think it is Lyra) in their set up instructions.  They recommend looking at a cartridge from the front and then cuing the arm down to a groove near the center of the record; at the moment of contact, the cantilever will briefly skew inward or outward; if it skews inward more antiskating should be applied.