Cartridge ISOLATION; What Say You?

I was wondering about the Houdini @slaw , let us know how that works. I just gut thru putting the funk firm mat on one of my tables. It’s is so good I bought another for my vpi. If the housing is as good at the mat. I’m in. 

Houdini I mean. 

I'm sure Lewm and Atmasphere shed some light on this.

Cartridge isolation is very important but at what level? This is not difficult at all. The cartridge has to maintain a fixed orientation to the record. ANYTHING that corrupts that relationship like unipivot arms is bad. So the solution is, you isolate the entire turntable or rather the chassis that carries the tonearm and platter. This is the rational behind suspended turntables. They keep the environment from interfering with the cartridge without further corrupting the relationship of the cartridge to the record.
This cartridge isolation pad is beyond silly. What it does is dependent on the surface area of contact as well as the tightness of the screws, two variables that can not be easily controlled not to mention it corrupts that relationship. 

CARTRIDGE ISOLATOR it’s called.

Plinth and Base Isolation put to the side for this:
Jitter within the cartridge’s guts, down the signal wires, put to the side for this:

It’s about Jitter getting into the tonearm and back into the cartridge isn’t it?

It’s about less rigid fastening of the cartridge body, no matter how thin, to the arm isn’t it? This UGLY thing is quite thick.

And, the reviewer (not the isolator’s maker) mentioned a less rigid fastening of the tonearm base to the plinth, a double whammy of some, even if infinitesimal, movement.

Jitter into/back out of the arm, if acknowledged, is unwanted movement, sooooo, isolate from jitter? a speck of isolation (movement) reduces the jitter going/thus reduces the jitter feedback?

That's what makes the Strain-Gauge, supposedly essentially Jitter Free so tempting to me.

Elliot, I am still stewing, because you said “Lew’s thing is ugly”. My wife refuses to comment.

The ugly truth is none of us understands the physics well enough to judge the Enabler out of context, where context is one’s own ears and one’s own audio system. My hunch is that results will vary according to cartridge construction and compliance, headshell composition, tonearm damping, effective mass, and bearing stability, etc. So insults and invective have no place in this discussion. If you’re interested, give it a shot and report back here stating the cartridge and tonearm you use, at minimum. Saying “I loved it”, or “I hated it”, doesn’t help.