Is my anti-skating too strong.

Geeze Louise! The lengths some will go just to try and get a dig in!  

Check this out- a line runs between two points. Just to help you out, we will call the points A, and B. Are you with me so far? Okay so we are gonna call the stylus Point A, and the Pivot we are gonna call Point B. Are you with me? Have I lost you? I bet I have, this is so hard. But it is only getting harder. Because sorry, but this is a story problem. You have the story. Now the question: Are A and B in a line? Of course they are. How can they not be? Anyone? Beuller? 

What you mean to say is the stylus is not in line with the arm tube. But this is completely different and utterly irrelevant. The arm tube can be straight, or curved, and the headshell also can be in line, or offset.  

These things make a difference, sure. BUT NOT TO SKATING!!! Please, please, PLEASE stop trying to confuse everyone by changing the subject! 

All i can say is that your table needs further refining if you have the stylus moving during alignment and distortion on tracks from test albums but yes disengage anti skate for aligning and make sure the table is level when you align.

@feldman4     I have too many MFSLs to check.  But look for 45rpm classical symphonies presented on four discs and issued around 2005. Typically, each movement is presented on one side, so the other four sides are empty.  Given the pricing effect, I don't know what is the advantage of doing that since the record needs to be pressed in just the same way, creating just the same conditions as in a disc modulated on both sides.  Perhaps they felt there is advantage in never having to put the modulated side against the TT mat.  They don't seem to do it now.
Or if you don't mind getting drawn in, you could phone them; they are very helpful.

@mijostyn     Did you ever hear an Aeroarm?  There are only about 4 loose in the whole world!  If not, please pipe down and stay piped down.

Obviously a disc pressed off-centre is faulty (many of them I agree) and will not play to best advantage, but the lateral oscillation will be exactly the same when played with pivoted and parallel arms and will have precisely the same effect on the cantilever, located as it is very close to tangential to the groove.  Surely that is simple enough.

And why do you say the anti-skating must be 10% of TF.  As @justmetoo points out, the requirement will vary according to stylus profile.

@justmetoo     The reason Shibata and Line Contact stylii need more anti-skating is that their extreme eliptical narrow profile lateral sides create more friction with the groove walls compared with, say, a spherical stylus, the other extreme.  The contact area is far less so a like downforce creates more friction.  Such stylii typically feature on moving coil cartridges and need to run at greater tracking forces, typically 2.5g or more compared with a MM that can go down below 1.0g.

But 2.3g of anti-skating is waaayyy too much.  You are damaging your records and stylus as well as getting bad sound.  @jmijostyn is overdogmatic like many here, but about on the money.  Turn it back and listen for less distortion and better channel balance.

@mc    When did you measure the friction in the groove and on an unmodulated side?

There is a very interesting method for setting anti-skating force on the website of Vacuum State Electronics. It was written by the late Allen Wright, a highly talented electronics designer and expert on all things analogue:

http://www.vacuumstate.com/fileupload/GuruSetUp.pdf
(for the advice on anti-skating, see page 2 of the document that opens)

Allen recommends using the music grooves of a normal record, not a blank disc. And he recommends identifying the correct anti-skating force by ear. His method is, I think, well worth following.
The central idea put forward by Allen is that adjusting for optimal anti-skating force involves proceeding by small increments - which at first may produce no audible effect (his advice is to concentrate your attention on the right channel, listening particularly for maximum microdynamics).
As one approaches the range of correct settings, there will suddenly be a very noticeable improvement in the right channel (in other words, anti-skating setting follows a very shallow curve and then suddenly switches to a very steep curve - see Allen’s representation of this in ‘Pix 3' on the webpage).
So, I wonder whether anyone has any comments on this, based on their experience.
There is a further interesting point that Allen makes: once you reach - by small increments - the point where the right channel is performing as well as the left channel, you can then go on and apply further small increments, and the effect will be to produce further improvement in both channels. If you then proceed beyond this point - with one increment too much - there will be a sudden audible worsening - a collapse of the microdynamics - in both channels. In other words, once you exceed the optimal anti-skating force, there is a sudden, precipitate fall-off in performance.
Does anybody’s experience of setting anti-skating force confirm Allen’s account?
Peter

@pgtaylor 
Yes - I triangulate the three methods.

Step 1 - I use Soundsmith's technique of setting by dropping the stylus between the inner grooves in the run off and doing an initial set.
Step 2 - I then use the Allen Wright method, running up from low to high antiskate. There is a sweet spot where the sound is most natural.
Step 3 - I check the cantilever to make sure it is straight. You can also use an eccentric record to check if the cantilever shifts more to one side than the other.

Allen Wrights methodology is much easier to perform if the VTA is dialled in accurately, because that with the correct antiskate gives you maximum ease and naturalness of sound, the most harmonically complete.

Using rules like x% of tracking force is wrong because you dont know the compliance in the horizontal plain, it can be quite different to the vertical compliance specified.