Wednesday, August 24, 2022

More Anti-Skate Testing

The Feickert test disk has a serious of tracking tests.  The last one breaks up horribly at my previous antiskating compensation setting of 3.1g.  Dialing the antiskating down to 2.2g passes the test.  At 1.5g antiskating, it begins to get ugly again.  It's fairly decent from to 1.8-2.7g.

On the silent groove, 2.65 is as low as it can go without pulling toward the center.  It can go as high as 2.9g without strongly pulling outwards, which it does do at my previous setting of 3.1g.

The overlap between these two tests being 2.65-2.7g, that's where I set the antiskating compensation.

Later I took out the "Orion Test Record."  It has a very intense trackability test.  My cartridge with the above settings was breaking up somewhat on the second to last series and skipped the middle frequency on the last series

Checking the antiskating blank space it seemed like the Linn antiskating adjustment followed the tracking force almost perfectly.  This blank space is much larger than the one on the Feickert disk and you can try different spots more easily.  Though I wonder if the Feickert has some special "roughness" that makes it more correct.

With this in mind I tried lower and higher tracking forces than my usual 2.2g, with the antiskating set the same.  Lower tracking forces resulted in worse tracking (as expected, but I wanted to be sure).  Forces higher than 2.3g sounded no better (I tried 2.5g and 2.7g and it was the same or possibly worse).  It might have improved a tad still further with 2.4g antiskating.  At 2.5g it was pulling toward the side on the blank grove and no better on the trackability test.

So as of 8pm, this is the setting: 2.3g tracking force (on the Linn dial, measures 2.26g) and 2.4g antiskating compensation.  This is only a hair above the 2.2g recommended maximum tracking force and therefore I think it's OK.

The cartridge still skipped the middle frequency of the last series.  I think this test record is damaged from previous testing and I ordered a "mint+, possibly unplayed" one on Discogs.



 

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