Anti skate weight sme tonearm
The small weight on the left side, hanging from the fishing line, is the antiskating weight. It is used to set the tracking force, by sliding it forward on the bar. This means I rarely use the recommended amount, but I don't worry too much.Japi Roelofs wrote:The weight on the right side, sitting on the bar, is the rider weight. I've kind of wandered back to high compliance cartridges, but I'm less concerned about antiskating - I won't apply it to the point where the cantilever is affected.
![anti skate weight sme tonearm anti skate weight sme tonearm](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/IZcAAOSwMoxfEJH-/s-l300.jpg)
I wonder if the enthusiasm for MCs that followed the heyday of high compliance cartridges was, at least in part, the consequence of both audible and visible lessening of that deflection of the cantilever. I was a high compliance true believer, but I was always bothered by how far out of true my Sonus and AKG cantilevers were when antiskating was applied. It is also true that applying antiskating torques the cantilever, quite visibly so with very compliant stylus, so avoiding that complication must be a good thing. I don't know if the assumptions behind this idea are correct, or if it is truly effective, but it is true that the sound produced by the AR can be very good indeed. Shoving it back down with a little more tracking force will force into equal contact with the other side. Since the groove walls are at 45 degrees, if the stylus presses horizontally against one side more than the other, the stylus will try to slide up that side of the groove. So they chose to produce such a tonearm without a device that would actually be more of an issue than a benefit where the most care is brought to it's peculiar "bearing".ĪR argued that if the point of antiskating was to keep the stylus from pressing on the inner side of the groove with more force than the outer side, then a little more tracking force would accomplish that goal. My understanding on this is that an anti-skate device might impair such bearing system/design and the bias forces at work are then likely less of an issue than to try to correct it. Some tonearms manufacturers opt for no "anti-skate" device accordingly. And so is the ergonomic/mass distribution on the tonearm. The "inertia" of the bearing will play some part as well. Yes, VTF is often taken as a "scale" reference but it's only a "ball park". To realize how important it is and what different bias systems do. To know what weight to purchase, I studied the matter for the first time in my life. Through my gradual conversion into very heavy effective mass on my SME SII to optimize the performance of my Denon DL-102 cartridge, in the final stage of this mass enhancement of my tonearm I had to to purchase a heavier anti-skate weight as well. I was going off some earlier comments in this thread, but you're point is well taken :-kĮxactly. So higher tracking force needs more anti-skating. Which is why tonearm manufacturers suggest to match anti-skating setting with tracking force. I always thought that higher tracking force = more friction = more skating. 14:57I understand how a higher VTF should help negate the lack of AS. With all other (magnetic) cartridges anti-skate has no effect on left-right balance, this is because the cartridge is sensitive to the velocity of motion of the stylus and not to the absolute displacement of the stylus. When the cartridge in use is the strain-gauge type this is true because this type is sensitive to stylus absolute displacement. It is sometimes stated that anti-skate is necessary for the correct balance of loudness between left and right channels. With normal groove modulation the presence or absence of anti-skate has no effect on sound quality.
![anti skate weight sme tonearm anti skate weight sme tonearm](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/-h8AAOSwopRYYr~R/s-l300.jpg)
without it the downforces on the opposite groove walls are unequal and one channel (right) starts to mistrack before left. the onset of mistracking due to excessive groove modulation combined with low downforce values takes place at the same loudness for inner and outer groove walls. without it wear rates are unequal to some degree.Ģ. equalizes the downforces on the inner and outer groove walls so that the wear rates are the same.