Anti-Skate Adjustment

analog music reproduction discussion

Anti-Skate Adjustment

Postby Shannon Parks » Mon Oct 22, 2007 7:23 am

I've read a good method for adjusting the anti-skate is to use a non-grooved record. You just place the stylus on the center, and add anti-skate if it drifts toward the spindle or lower the anti-skate if it drifts outward.

This past weekend, I gave my uncle a new garage turntable. It was just a semi-automatic Yamaha, circa '81 belt drive. These Japanese tables are a dime a dozen, but the performance is more than adequate. Combined with a Ortofon OMB10 - an oem OM10 - it is about the best sounding budget table I've heard. Anyhow, while spinning the vinyl, I mentioned hearing some live Joe Jackson recently and my uncle retrieved his Joe Jackson LPs. One was a three sided record called Big World. It was a double LP with one side empty. Interesting, I thought! Even though it has one large return groove in it, the gaps are large enough for this anti-skate adjustment. I plopped the stylus in the center with 0 anti-skate. It quickly drifted toward the spindle. I adjusted to 1.5 anti-skate. It slowly drifting toward the outside edge. I then set it to 1 anti-skate, and it was then perfect. It would be centered, and it would shimmy either direction.

It may have been our imagination, but it sounded even better after that adjustment. :) I'll have to pick up a copy of Big World, but I wondered if anyone knew of a similar record? Maybe one without a groove altogether? I'd rather not pay $20+ for a 'test' record.
Last edited by Shannon Parks on Tue Oct 23, 2007 5:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby EWBrown » Mon Oct 22, 2007 7:51 am

I'll check my LPs, I may have a "flat side" disk in there somewhere...

Monty Python had a "3-sided LP" called "Matching Tie and Hankerchief", what they did is have two parallel grooves on one side of the record, so you had a 50/50 chance of getting the "right" track. Of course, the sacrifice was that each of these two tracks were half the time duration of a normal LP side...

The strangest records I ever found? a set of black glass 16 2/3 RPM recordings of a lecture given at Harvard, in the long ago dim and distant past.

The strangest part, is that they start in the center, and work their way out to the edge. (Just like CDs do today). I've never had anything on which to play them, excetp at 33rpm or faster, then the prof sounds like Alvin of the "Chipmunks"... Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_09

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Postby Shannon Parks » Mon Oct 22, 2007 9:36 am

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Postby Shannon Parks » Mon Oct 22, 2007 9:56 am

I actually just grabbed Prince's Purple Rain Laserdisc from eBay, after getting the LD idea from the AudioKarma thread. Almost grabbed a Star Trek one, but Prince seemed more fitting. Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_03

$6 shipped. Cheap turntable gadget!
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Postby EWBrown » Mon Oct 22, 2007 10:02 am

The only thing with a Laser Disc, is getting it properly centered, if the hole is larger than a normal LP spindle, and smaller than a 45 center hole.

Having said that,

Here in NE, there once was a spaghetti company in Massachusetts, called Prince Spaghetti Company.

Anyone who was in the Boston area in the 60s and 70s should well remember the ubiquitous "Anthony" commercials... Wednesdays were forever known as "Prince Spaghetti Day".

Now that this company has long since gone away, and the name has resurfaced as a Canadian spaghetti company, I often refer to it as:


(drum roll please)


"The Spaghetti Company Formerly Known As Prince"


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Postby Shannon Parks » Mon Oct 22, 2007 12:09 pm

EWBrown wrote:The only thing with a Laser Disc, is getting it properly centered, if the hole is larger than a normal LP spindle, and smaller than a 45 center hole.


I think for this application I can just eyeball it, but indeed I would hate to have a tonearm zip to the center spindle area, fall in a little hole and bust a stylus. :o

'Course the opposite can also happen, like the tonearm flying off the outside edge, so I guess I'll just be careful.
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Postby TomMcNally » Mon Oct 22, 2007 1:52 pm

I see a Prince Spaghetti truck in a field near Mt. Holly, NJ on
my way to work in Trenton on Sundays ... I think it's been
there for like 30 years. I was wondering where they were.
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Postby wiredbecker » Mon Oct 22, 2007 9:50 pm

great TT tip Shannon

thanks man
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Postby erichayes » Tue Oct 23, 2007 12:08 am

I just ordered a foot of 1.375" dia. polyethylene rod and a 7.2 mm drill bit from McMaster-Carr this evening. Anyone who wants a LD adapter should get a hold of me via pmail or at aa6eh@hotmail.com Projected cost is around $2.50 USD, but I'll nail that down when I get M-C's invoice.
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Postby Shannon Parks » Tue Oct 23, 2007 5:37 am

Brilliant! Sign me up, Eric. I'll just throw that in with a Paypal payment for two of those Sheffield Lab discs.

BTW, I looked all over for a "datasheet" spec for LD spindles and came up with nothing. Did you happen to have one for measurement?
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Postby EWBrown » Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:13 am

Eyeballing the Laser Disk on a turntable isn't as easy as it sounds, even a tiny RCH (a quaint machinist's term referring to approximately 1/1000 of an inch) will create enough wobble to totally mess up any attempt at fine-tuning the anti-skating...

Whilst I am in the process of making bad puns, this one popped into my head this morning, during the long and dull commute to work:


Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are joining firces with Don Henley, Glenn Frey and Joe Walsh, to form a new band. Which will be called


(drum roll please)

THE BEAGLES

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Postby erichayes » Tue Oct 23, 2007 3:45 pm

Last time I counted, I had a little over 200 titles on LD, but about 10 are duplicates. I just grabbed one and miked it out--exactly 1.375". The spindle diameter measures four thou under 7.2 mm, and a record spindle hole measures exactly 7.2mm. Stock is usually made a few thou over spec, so I'll probably have to turn it a skosh for correct fit.
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Postby DerekVa » Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:11 pm

separks wrote:I actually just grabbed Prince's Purple Rain Laserdisc from eBay, after getting the LD idea from the AudioKarma thread. Almost grabbed a Star Trek one, but Prince seemed more fitting. Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_03

$6 shipped. Cheap turntable gadget!


Please, please, please stop the laserdisc abuse. Some of us still love those big-ass, cheesy, rainbow pain-in-the-asses.

Or, at least, choose a bad movie to abuse. I suggest 'Ishtar'.
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Postby Shannon Parks » Wed Oct 24, 2007 4:15 am

But now the urban legend about the scratched-up Laserdisc that was used by some poor schmuck on his turntable has been proven true! :)
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Postby EWBrown » Wed Oct 24, 2007 6:05 am

Comin' to think of it, I may still have a laserdisc (or at least something that looks like one) hanging up in my rarely-used office "cube".

I'll agree, Ishtar was, and probably still is, the singularly worst movie ever produced. Way back when, my then-girlfriend was really hot-to-trot to go see it (and drag me along). We went, and walked out of it about an hour into it... Even the Tom Cruise version of "War of the WOrlds" was a stellar production, when compared to Ishtar...

If anything, that wretched flick can serve as a standard with which to compare really bad and awful things :o :urgh: :parp: :worm: :worm:

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