I went down town today in the blizzard to find a washer to raise my tonearm. I needed about a 3/4" flat washer (.781 I.D.) and about .09" thick (can't remember the standard). Anyway, no luck. Since I installed the Sumiko Blue Point Special into this table, it's been kind of special lately and the ass of the tone arm was way down.
I was using my EPDM mat on the glass platter and other than the VTA being skewed, all was pretty good, but no washer.
Then the idea hit me. If you can't raise the arm up, how about lower the mat. Diggin through the house, I had nothin' that would come close to working. I opened up one of the cupboards and there was some 110 lb. card stock. Of course, the stock is 8 1/2" x 11" so I had to use 3 sheets to cover the glass platter. I just used scotch tape on the seams, placed the glass platter on top and used an exacto knife to cut out the circle.
I then thought I should isolate the paper from the mat alittle so I found some other colored card stock, put some double faced tape on that and used a hole punch to make some dots. I eyeballed them around the perimeter.
When I was downtown, I found some sticky-backed silicone dots and put them on my dust cover for better grip. One on each side. That works very well.
I thought I would hear more surface noise with the paper mat, but not so. So far so good. The arm is way more parallel to the record surface too.
Wayner
