I resurrected my turntable a few months ago and decided to start converting my vinyl to digital. I bought a budget cartridge that has a spherical stylus. However I have now discovered that I've had the turntable anti-skate set for an elliptical stylus. Does anyone know how this will have been affecting my recordings ? I must say that I can't tell any difference but I'm intrigued.
The anti-skate adjustment is not affected by the type of stylus you use. It's merely an adjustment that keeps the tonearm from drifting to either side and the setting just depends on how well your stylus is tracking the record grooves.
Thanks for the reply. So why is there a different setting for each ? The thumbwheel control has a picture of a circle on one side and an ellipse on the other. Both 'sides' range from 0 to 3.
Interesting. What kind of turntable are you using? I have Technic 1200s and there is just one dial for anti-skate. It seems that sometimes depending on how much weight you have on your stlus, it will cause the tonearm to drift either towards or away from the center spindle. The anti-skate will either add or decrease the pressure depending on the drift. If you've adjusted the needles tracking force properly, the anti-skate should be set to zero and only need to make adjustments in the event of the drifting problem. I would imagine the manufacturer of your turntable may have noticed a tendency to drift differently when using either a sperical or eliptical needle and designed it accordingly.
It's a Dual CS505/2. The instructions tell you to set the appropriate value of the antiskating according to a table. First you choose either elliptical or spherical and then an appropriate value. The value is the same as the tracking force for "Dry" play and slightly less for "Wet" play (whatever they mean). As I said, what I have recorded sounds fine so I'm not overly bothered. Just wanted to understand. I've spent far too much time on this conversion but I'm done now. It's time to place the turntable back in the cobwebs. Thanks for your help.
