I read the following in the latest edition of The Absolute Sound:
"I first became hooked on high-end audio in the late Sixties, by
which time bias compensation had become pretty common. However,
the turntable I purchased then and used for well over a decade
was an Acoustic Research XA, the integral arm of which had
no antiskating device. Edgar Villchur, its designer, argued that any
mistracking owing to bias is easily addressed by a modest 10-15%
increase in tracking force, which is certainly born out in my own
experience. I used a Shure M91E pickup?a popular combination
back then?and I almost never heard any mistracking. Indeed, that
Shure/AR combination could out-track many far fancier and more
expensive setups, while the pretty rare LPs that it couldn?t track
couldn?t be tracked by any other arms I knew of either. (I own and
still listen to an XA, fitted with a Shure V15xMR pickup, and it
sounds wonderful and tracks for all intents and purposes flawlessly.)
In the decades since, every arm I purchased had bias compensation,
and I used it, mostly because it was available, not because
I could absolutely demonstrate that it was better. To wit: About
a year ago I somehow lost one of the tiny rubber grommets that
keep the loop of the anti-skating thread in the proper indented ring
on the outrigger of the Basis Vector IV arm. So I just removed the
thread and used the arm sans antiskating. The result? I?d have to lie
to say I heard any difference either in the reproduction as such or in
the truly superlative tracking with my reference Ortofon Windfeld,
nor have I increased tracking force." - p72, TAS 284.
What do you guys make of that? I have always adjusted bias compensation because I prefer that to increasing tracking firce, which I believe was detrimental to the longevity of my stylus and records. Now this gentleman says it is not even necessary to increase VTF. Have anyone tested that?
"I first became hooked on high-end audio in the late Sixties, by
which time bias compensation had become pretty common. However,
the turntable I purchased then and used for well over a decade
was an Acoustic Research XA, the integral arm of which had
no antiskating device. Edgar Villchur, its designer, argued that any
mistracking owing to bias is easily addressed by a modest 10-15%
increase in tracking force, which is certainly born out in my own
experience. I used a Shure M91E pickup?a popular combination
back then?and I almost never heard any mistracking. Indeed, that
Shure/AR combination could out-track many far fancier and more
expensive setups, while the pretty rare LPs that it couldn?t track
couldn?t be tracked by any other arms I knew of either. (I own and
still listen to an XA, fitted with a Shure V15xMR pickup, and it
sounds wonderful and tracks for all intents and purposes flawlessly.)
In the decades since, every arm I purchased had bias compensation,
and I used it, mostly because it was available, not because
I could absolutely demonstrate that it was better. To wit: About
a year ago I somehow lost one of the tiny rubber grommets that
keep the loop of the anti-skating thread in the proper indented ring
on the outrigger of the Basis Vector IV arm. So I just removed the
thread and used the arm sans antiskating. The result? I?d have to lie
to say I heard any difference either in the reproduction as such or in
the truly superlative tracking with my reference Ortofon Windfeld,
nor have I increased tracking force." - p72, TAS 284.
What do you guys make of that? I have always adjusted bias compensation because I prefer that to increasing tracking firce, which I believe was detrimental to the longevity of my stylus and records. Now this gentleman says it is not even necessary to increase VTF. Have anyone tested that?