Anti-Skate Weight …. Better sound without it?

Are those who always advocate using no anti-skate already biased?

'It all seems to sound slightly better and more resolved, open, without the weight."

You answered your own question.

Antiskate-Insert beating a dead horse pic here.

It may be that your tonearm has enough horizontal friction by itself to provide sufficient AS on average. Your report that you have L channel distortion on one LP when you use the AS weight is exactly what to expect when you apply too much AS. At 1g VTF, you dont need much AS. Furthermore you don’t say how you are adjusting the weight ( how much AS); you may be setting it way too high.

What this probably means is that the anti-skate set by your tonearm is inaccurately calibrated; if it sounds better without the weight it is probably adding too great an anti-skate force. The only way to correct for that is to not rely on the the calibration, but on the effect it has. That means either an ungrooved disc (most say this is unreliable) or something like a Wally Skater.

Are those who always advocate using no anti-skate already biased?

I would think they are, by definition, unbiased!

One is always “using” an amount of AS equal to the horizontal component of friction in the pivot bearings plus any additional resistance to free rotation of the pivot provided by the tonearm wires. There’s no such thing as zero AS.