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Hi Everyone, This could go here or under source as well. But it seems more of you look here than there. I needed a way to check the anti-skating on one of my turntables. I suspected the calibration might be off. This is often done with a test record that has no grooves. I remembered that a long time ago I got one of those flat vinyl records in a magazine. The often square ones kind with only one side recorded. Sure enough it was in my pile of phono junk and still in good shape. I put it on the TT and started it to play and set down the needle. If the anti-skating is good it should mostly stay in the same location. If it pulls much in either direction then you can adjust the control to compensate. Sure enough the calibration was off. I was using 1.5 gram as the tracking force and the AS ended up at 1.1 to make it behave. It was sure cheaper than getting a $30 disk to do the same thing.
Now that's a darn good idea!
What a good idea. It beats the other uses I have seen for old vinyl like melting them and turning them into fruit bowls or plant pot holders!