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Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ.

It's really hard to explain in words...

I think of a kid's wagon with four wheels and a pull handle that is attached to the axle of the front pair of wheels. If you pull it at an angle, you generate a side force that disrupts the path in the direction you want it to go. The skating force only exists because of the friction between the stylus and the groove. Ideally you want the cantilever to travel on a line always tangent to the groove, to overcome the force of friction without generating any spurious forces. The tonearm/headshell/cartridge have to exert a force that opposes the force of friction. If and when that force is applied at an angle to tangency, then a "side force" is generated. The true vector direction of that side force is really to the rear and to the inside of the arm wand, for a conventional pivoted tonearm with stylus overhanging the spindle, but the tonearm is stiff and resists that force. Thus the resulting force that leads to spurious motion can only be along the arc that the stylus is permitted to travel by the stiff bearings at the pivot. Also, because there is headshell offset angle, the cantilever is never parallel to a line extending back through the pivot point; thus there is always a skating force due to that alone, even when the stylus is passing through those two points of tangency to the groove. Sheesh! So sorry for the gobbledygook.

Anyway, the groove walls pushing or pulling are not the prime cause of the skating force.


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  Michael Percy Audio  


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