How to isolate turntable from footstep shake or vibration

If you are in audio, and especially if you are into improvement, then it pays big time to be willing to try stuff out without being overly concerned how perfect it is, how it looks, etc. 

People ask me this one all the time. What is the best one to do? What is the most important component? What is the weakest link? These are all based on a false premise. Every link is weak, at least in the sense it can always be made stronger. Every component is the most important.  

Before I came to this realization I was building shelves out of different materials, sanding and finishing, doing all this work that only makes it look good but has nothing to do with how it sounds. Eventually I figured out I can cut a piece of wood, stick it under something, and hear how that wood sounds without going to all that trouble. 

The perfect example of this is the tone arm board. This can be anything. Could be cardboard cut with scissors. For sure could be MDF, or any piece of wood, acrylic, plastic, aluminum, Corian, whatever. Don't even have to drill holes, because for testing purposes you could stick the arm on there with tape or blu-tack or heck some arms even gravity will do.  

Nobody ever does this. If they did they could learn a heap in no time flat. But they don't. Why? Who knows. Appearances. Everyone so freaking worried about how it might look. 

Me, I am concerned with how it will sound. What did Magenta say again? "Risk it!"

It was Magenta, right?

@millercarbon .

First thing I learned out of college. Got a job as electro mechanical engineer. I needed to have a perfect gripping material to coat a rotating drum that was to pull fiberglass. I got out my calculator and tables of coefficients of friction. After a couple hours in the books, I realized I was getting no where. I quickly fabricated a little drum with motor, and went out and bought every brand of PVC tape, adhesive, and Saran Wrap I could find. Then just wrapped the drum and tried it until I found one that worked perfectly. Then I built a 10’ high drum and used the material I found by quick trial and error. A couple years later got into audiophilia… where I quickly learned peak wattage was meaningless… and the watts RMS was nearly so… and that I must try interconnects and power cords in my system. It’s a good lesson to learn. 

Engineer, you say. Did they drive you out of the profession? Because all the engineers around here are the worst most tone deaf pontificators of that which does not in reality work I have ever seen. You must be a pariah or something. Welcome! Welcome to the club! The club of real world practical thinkers! Our motto: We get results! 🤣😂😁

Darn millercarbon, I am stuck agreeing. In medical school we learn to do things perfectly according to the state of the art at the time by learning from people who already do it perfectly. But, looking back at history it took a lot of baby steps to get there. Perfect is only a perspective in time. As time changes so does perfection. I am sure if da Vinci were alive today he would show you are all the places he made mistakes on the Mona Lisa. 
Being a perfectionist does not mean you are paralyzed. It certainly means you are never happy with what you do, or what anybody does for that matter. It is not a very happy place to be.