Reed 2G magnetic antiskate

Can’t explain it, but you know It’s not working, some part of it is not right, you need to write Reed about it, and have it fixed,

Sometimes the magnetic anti-skate of my Acos Lustre GST-801 model fails, I saw photos once, still hard to understand, every day I am happy mine still works!

Even if only a little is needed, anti-skate is vital to proper tracing of both sides of a groove, (and to ride low enough in the groove) otherwise ALL the fine equipment is dealing with a compromised signal, can still sound good, but not great, certainly not as good as it can be which we all surely want, and all it costs is ’get it right’.

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Grooves, when properly or poorly ridden, benefit from advanced stylus shapes. Any given sideways force on a groove wall (and simultaneously the side of a stylus) will be distributed to a greater or lesser area determined by the amount of contact surface, so your line contact will distribute the same force over a MUCH larger area. Great, less wear if correct or off. 

see the bottom rows in these charts

Avoid taking anything as exact, but for general guidance, they agree in concept.

This top chart is old, shows 3 varieties of Line Contact, MicroLinear the best on the chart.

The bottom chart is from Audio Technica, they are showing their ’Special Line Contact’ as significantly more contact area than their other profiles, the names relate to their brand’s named profiles.

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There is one ’VPI" trick you can try, because your arm has a short length of wire with a mini-din connector. Early VPI arms did not have any anti-skate mechanism. You spin a twist in the short length of wire before you plug it into it’s adapter. The tension of the twist exerts an outward pressure to the arm. 

I was able to use the back-pressure of my Blackbird 12,5 arm's wire, but I want a reliably consistent adjustable force, not a random result that probably changes as the arm moves thru it's arc.

No one is claiming that AS is not needed.  And no one is claiming that stylus shape makes no difference to reading the groove. But I don’t think stylus shape affects the skating force. The varying angle that the vector of the friction force makes with respect to an imaginary straight line back to the pivot does make a difference to skating force. If magnetic AS is not fail safe, that makes a good case in favor of the good old weight on a string AS.  My Reed 2A avoids the string in favor of tiny metal rods,  I am not crazy about that apparatus, because the two metal pieces that must rub together as the stylus traverses the LP are a potential source of noise. (Noise I don’t hear but which troubles anyone with audiophilia nervosa.)

lewm

I agree, stylus shape does not cause any effect to create inward skate, and does not cause any anti-skate force by itself. Inward skate on Pivoted Arms is caused by friction, the amount of friction is directly proportional to downward tracking force. Our arms methods/mechanisms create outer force to counter-act naturally occurring inner-skate.

IF anti-skate is properly applied, to counteract inward skate, the stylus will 'ideally' float in the center of the groove, ready to react to the groove walls equally on both sides. As you know and have stated, t's never ideal 'set and forget', all kinds of variations occur during play, we can only do the best we can, making final adjustments when listening to familiar content with easy to hear imaging that reveals when it is essentially right.

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OP IMPLIED ...... and others in other anti-skating threads have minimized the importance, some have even dismissed anti-skate as un-neccessary, 

jw944ts OP

359 posts

11-17-2025 at 10:16pm 

"Both of my cartridges have line contact styli. I have read they are less sensitive to skating  forces."

Thus I clarified a few things.

Even if just a little is needed, it is VITAL to get it right. 

Your mechanism is two round discs (magnets or magnetic metal) set into the edge of the circular base of the arm wand, (one of which is visible in the photo below), they move as the arm pivots, but are fixed in place.

Item 1 in the photo adjusts a magnetic metal or a magnet that is simply moved closer or further away from those two round items, i.e. whatever you cannot see that moves gets closer or further away increasing or decreasing magnet attraction. As the arm pivots, the 1st magnet moves out of range as the 2nd magnet moves within range.

I would think you could ascertain what moves in or out, and if it is moving properly. You might be able to back it all the way out of it's threaded hole.

Did anything fall out, get it's polarity reversed? The two round elements, could they have been put in 'backwards', i.e. their polarity reversed?

I would ask REED, 

For what it's worth,  I found out from my latest discussions on agon regarding antiskate that the arm should move towards centre even on the blank side just not as fast .there are links in the end of the discussions if you search my to antiskate or not antiskate post