How to isolate turntable from footstep shake or vibration

Miller Carbon wrote, " Mass will solve most problems, if you can get enough of it. That's the trick. Fortunately mass is dirt cheap. Literally: one or two 50 lb bags of play sand, in a box several inches deep, put a piece of MDF or butcher block on top, you are pretty much golden "
That was my thought when I built my turntable stand.  I cut a section of a well seasoned white oak log about  20" in diameter after all the bark was removed and 18" tall.  Then I sanded it smooth so that it could be nicely finished with walnut stain and mucho coats of polyurethane varnish.  I then mounted a large maple butcher block on top of the log section.   I enlisted the help of a competitive weight lifting son of a good friend to help me set it on a 15" high brick hearth well away from the fire place.  The turntable sits on the butcher block and seems to be impervious to foot falls or other floor transmitted vibrations.  This conforms to my philosophy that anything worth doing is worth over doing.

Jordan Peterson sold me on the idea anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. His point being too many people put off doing until they can figure out how to do it perfectly. In that case it is better to do it poorly, because then at least you learn from experience and maybe make it better next time. If you improve something even if only by a little bit, but keep at it, eventually it will be quite good. Or in any case a helluva lot better than when you started!

His point being too many people put off doing until they can figure out how to do it perfectly.

Perfectionism is procrastination and absolutely nothing else.

I think it is a bit dependent. One usually prizes perfectionism in a brain surgeon but not in a good manager. I am very pragmatic and can vary my precision based on the task at hand. I my way to the executive level in Corporate IT, so had to deal with many perfectionist programmers that would never finish anything.  My best friend is a perfectionist and has spent his life struggling to keep his head above water. He tried to be a Doctor, but just didn’t quite make it. Growing up with him I always felt inferior, I now look back and feel very sad for him… it can be like a disease.

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!"