Why does my record skip, and how do you stop it?

A skip has a cause, and the causes divide cleanly into two groups: things in the record and things in the turntable. Knowing which group you are in takes one test, and it saves you adjusting a deck that was never the problem.

Why does my record skip?

Because the stylus left the groove. That only happens if the groove stopped being followable or if the stylus was not being held in it properly.

Those are the two groups. Dirt, a scratch or a pressing fault means the groove is at fault. Level, tracking force, anti-skate, a worn stylus or a shaking floor means the stylus is at fault.

Does it skip in the same place every time?

This is the test, and it is the first thing to do.

Play the passage again. Then play it a third time.

• Same place every time. The record. Clean it first. If a wet or brush clean does not fix it, look at the groove in raking light for a scratch. A brand new LP that skips in the same place on more than one turntable is a pressing fault, and it is worth seeing how a record is actually pressed to understand how a defect gets in.
• Different places, or on several records. The turntable. Work through the list below in order.
• Only near the end of a side. Usually anti-skate or tracking force. The inner grooves are the hardest part of a record to track.

Is your turntable level?

Check this before touching anything adjustable, because it costs nothing and it is wrong surprisingly often.

A deck that leans puts a sideways component of the arm's own weight into the groove wall, so the stylus presses harder on one side than the other all the way across the record. A spirit level on the platter, front to back and side to side, settles it. Most plinths have adjustable feet; where they do not, a folded card under one corner is a legitimate fix.

Is your tracking force right?

This is the most common adjustable cause, and the usual story is that nothing was adjusted at all: the counterweight drifted.

Tracking force is the downward weight the stylus puts on the record, set by the position of the counterweight at the back of the tonearm. Too light and the stylus rides up out of the groove at the first difficult passage. Too heavy and it tracks securely while wearing the groove faster than it should.

Use the figure the cartridge maker publishes, which for most moving-magnet cartridges falls between about 1.5 and 2.5 grams. It is printed in the cartridge's own documentation, and that figure is the only one that matters; a number from a forum for a different cartridge is not relevant to yours. An inexpensive stylus scale removes all the guesswork.

Is anti-skate set?

Anti-skate counters a force that exists on every pivoted arm whether you set it or not.

As the arm swings through its arc, the drag of the groove pulls it inwards towards the spindle. Anti-skate applies a small outward force to cancel that, so the stylus sits centred between the two groove walls instead of leaning on the inner one. Set it too low and the arm is pulled inward hard enough to jump a groove, which is why anti-skate skips tend to happen in the loud passages and towards the centre of the record.

The conventional starting point is to match the anti-skate setting to your tracking force, then adjust by ear. Where the arm uses a hanging weight on a thread rather than a dial, check the thread has not come off its post.

Is the stylus worn or dirty?

A stylus is a tiny piece of diamond on a thin cantilever, and both parts fail.

Dirt first: a ball of lint on the tip stops the stylus reaching the bottom of the groove. A soft brush, stroked from back to front only, takes it off. Never sideways, and never with a fingertip.

Wear second. Styli are consumables with a life measured in hundreds of hours, and a worn tip no longer matches the groove profile. A cartridge that has been in service for years and skips on records that used to play is telling you something straightforward. A bent cantilever is visible from the front with good light.

Can the mat cause a skip?

Rarely, and in three specific ways worth ruling out.

• A warped or rolled mat. Felt that has been stored rolled holds the curl, and a record sitting on a ridge is effectively a warped record. This is why mats should be stored flat, and why ours ship flat in a record jacket rather than in a tube.
• Debris under the mat. Anything trapped between mat and platter becomes a bump the record has to ride over once per revolution. Lift the mat and look.
• A big change in thickness. A mat several millimetres different from the last one tilts the arm, which shifts the contact geometry. The figures are in does slipmat thickness matter.

A mat that is simply thin or cheap does not cause skipping. It causes other problems, mostly fibre on your records.

What about footsteps and the surface it stands on?

If the skip arrives when someone walks past, the cause is the floor and not the deck.

A stylus is reading grooves measured in microns, so it cannot tell a vibration arriving through the plinth from one cut into the record. Suspended wooden floors transmit footsteps extremely well. The fixes are ordinary: move the deck off the floor and onto something rigid against a wall, keep it out of the path of a speaker, and give it somewhere its own weight is not sitting on a springy shelf. Vibration isolation is the general principle; a heavy shelf is the usual practice.

What order should you check these in?

1. Play it twice. Same spot means the record, so clean it.
2. Spirit level on the platter.
3. Brush the stylus, front to back.
4. Check the counterweight against the cartridge's published tracking force.
5. Set anti-skate to roughly match it.
6. Lift the mat, check underneath, make sure it lies flat.
7. Walk across the room while a record plays. If it skips, the problem is the floor.
8. If nothing worked and the stylus has years on it, replace the stylus.

Most skips stop at step one or step four. For keeping the records themselves in shape, the Library of Congress guidance on disc care is the reference, and keeping the mat clean is the part under your records that most people forget.