Is my anti-skating too strong.

Incredible the amount of confusion generated by such a simple thing. Given a teeter-totter you guys would figure out a way of explaining it that would go on for years and never get there.

Pivoted arms use a geometry that is cobbled together from a need to compromise several conflicting goals. Try not to confuse and conflate the different goals!

When the stylus is tangent to the groove (null point) the pulling force caused by the friction with be inline with the tonearm’s linear offset, thereby causing a rotational torque around the tonearm’s pivot.

This loopy logic results from confusing the STYLUS being tangent with the line from the stylus to the arm pivot being tangent.

We got a couple things going on. Seriously, keep them straight! 

We got a line that runs from the stylus to the pivot. When this line is tangential to the groove then groove drag is perfectly in line and there is no skating force. Period. Does not matter which way you rotate the cartridge, head shell, or any of that. Stylus to pivot perpendicular to groove, zero skating force.

This however is not gonna play music very well! So what we do, make the arm longer. The stylus now overhangs and is beyond tangent. The angle it is off is a vector and that vector force is pushing the arm towards the center. Head shell angle, offset, cartridge alignment DOES NOT MATTER! All that matters as far as skating force is concerned is the overhang. 

Say again, as far as skating force is concerned! Which, according to the title at the top of the page is the subject we are concerned with here. Skating.  

Skating forces have been explained absolutely perfectly by me about a dozen times now. Where people deliberately go confusing is adding in other stuff that we do that does matter but has nothing to do with skating!

The reason for some head shells being cocked off at an angle, or offset, or whatever, cartridge alignment, is all completely different. Now you want to talk about that, fine. But please understand we are no longer talking about skating. We are now talking about tracking angle.

Because the same overhang that introduces skating also puts the arm out of tangency, and this introduces tracking distortion. So we rotate the cartridge trying to get it back at an angle that is tangent.

This is where the cantilever is tangent to the groove. Please note, this is NOT the stylus-pivot being tangent. This is the stylus itself being tangent. We cannot see the stylus, so we use the cantilever as a proxy, and hope the manufacturer has done his job and the stylus is aligned.

Very, very, very important we keep all these thing straight. Each and every one. ALL the confusions above are people conflating, talking about similar but different and sometimes completely unrelated things as if they are all the same. They are not all the same. Get it straight or get it wrong.

I wouldn't mind so much, except playing records is really fun, easy, and sounds great. Until someone comes along with a simple question, and you guys make it seem impossible, and an endless struggle to boot! It is just not that hard. But no one can tell, not from reading stuff like this!

@dover , I think you might do better with a straight line tracker.

@millercarbon, no reason to be condescending. Dover was probably an English major and missed the lecture on force vectors.

People who are having a hard time with this, get a blank record and do an experiment. Defeat your anti skating mechanism and put the stylus down on the rotating blank record. It will go zinging straight for the spindle. It will not stop at the null points. If the spindle doesn't stop it it will continue right off the other side of the record due to the overhang. If your overhang is not set up correctly you could smash your cantilever and do a number on the stylus's zenith not too mention it's tracking angle, azimuth, SRA and your wallet.

@millercarbon could you post a link to any article that supports or further explains your skating force theory. 

@mijostyn

Actually I do run a linear tracker - Eminent Technology ET2

Not an English major, but understand force vectors - studied Engineering at University. However, most of the english on this thread is such poor quality, it is the very reason many are arguing the same point from opposite sides of the tangent, or debating at cross purposes.

You blank record analogy is false.

If you understood what a tangent is, you would know that the null point is momentary in time is the stylus passes through ( assuming the record is spinning ) with a pivoted arm.

When the stylus is tangent to the groove (null point) the pulling force caused by the friction with be inline with the tonearm’s linear offset, thereby causing a rotational torque around the tonearm’s pivot.

The forces are far more complex than you posit. The primary force (drag ) is on the stylus/cantilver, not the arm. As the stylus passes through the point tangent it is momentarily pulling the cantilever in a straight line. Yes, you have a hinge between the cantilever/elastomer and the arm, but this gets very complex if you want to model that. Furthermore you need to factor in whether the arm bearings are offset, and what sort of cartridge cantilver mechanism is in play.

This is why it is much more prudent the eyeball the cantilever under dynamic conditions to ensure it is remains straight and is not getting pulled one way or the other. Using formulae and theory to set antiskate is not the best in my view.

If you talk to cartridge retippers such as the original Garrot Brothers and AJ van den hul, they will tell you most cartridges they reveive have uneven wear arising from incorrect antiskate settings.  

For the record not only do I run a linear tracker, but also a cantileverless cartridge - Ikeda Kiwame. Antiskate arguments are moot.

As an aside, when I had a hiatus from audio tinkering some years ago, I ran a high compliance Shure V15vxmr in the ET2 for 10 years. The cantilever was still dead straight after 10 years of running, despite the high horozontal mass of the ET2. 

It is a bit confusing that some posters are saying that overhang or offset angles "cause" the skating force.  The WallyTools videos posted here that shows that, under specific conditions, skating forces can even be in the opposite direction, add to the confusion because they do not attempt to explain why this is so.  Overhang and offset angles don't directly "cause" skating forces, but, they do create the conditions that give rise to skating forces because they create the geometry that causes the force of friction (drag) to pull the arm in one direction or another.  

The drag developed at the point of contact of the stylus with the wall of the groove is pulling along a line that is a tangent to the points of contact of the stylus.  Whether this tangent is in the same direction as the cantilever or to the left or right of this line is dependent on the alignment of the cartridge at that particular moment.  For a reference point, imagine that a spherical stylus, when viewed from directly above, is a clock face with the axis of the cantilever bisects the 6 o'clock and 12 o'clock position.  When that stylus is at a point on the record where the contact is at the 9 and 3 o'clock position, the drag is directly along the line of the cantilever.  Will this result in skating force?  The answer is:  it depends.  If the alignment is such that the cartridge is perfectly straight (no offset angle to the headshell and cartridge), at that perfect tangency point on the record, there is no skating force because that drag is pulling straight back to the pivot point of the tonearm and that pivot is resisting that drag.  But, if the alignment is a conventional alignment, such as Lofgren B, at the point of perfect tangency, there is a substantial skating force, because the drag along the same line as the cantilever is pulling at a point to the right of the pivot point (because of the offset angle) and the pivot cannot completely resist that pull.  On the setup with a cartridge facing straight forward with no overhang, at points outside of the perfect tangency point on the record, the points of contact will not be at the 9 and 3 o'clock position, but something toward the 10 and 4 o'clock position; this means that the drag direct (tangent to these points) is aimed to the right of the pivot and so there is skating force.  At the point inside the point of tangency, the points of contact are toward the 8 and 2 o'clock position, so the direction of drag is to the left of the pivot an the skating force is now in the opposite direction.  The reason there is ALWAYS a skating force in the conventional direction with conventional alignments (e.g., Lofgren) is because these alignments minimize the deviation from perfect 9 and 3 o'clock contact (always less than 2 degree deviation) which is MUCH less than the fixed offset angle; this means that the drag is ALWAYs to the right of the arm pivot point even if does deviate over the diameter of the record.