Anyone notice different amounts of surface noise with different arms?

Tonearms make a difference. Even different tonearm wands on the same air bearing sound different, with the same cartridge, set up over days. Since my tonearm has repeatable measurements (error bars 20 seconds of arc, 50 microns linear) and settings, it is easy to make exact comparisons with painstaking setup.

My experience says that tonearm wands make a difference.

@mijostyn Seems as if we are furious agreement on most things!  My stereo was stolen just after CDs came out, and just before I did a round-world trip.  I called unannounced on Quad in Huntington, UK and met Peter Walker.  I asked him what he thought of these new-fangled CDs and he said they were fantastic.  So I bought a pair of Quad electrostatic speakers, pre-amp and amp in the UK and a CD player in Singapore.  On that trip, my dad gave me his Garrard 301 turntable with SME 3009 arm and Shure V15 cartridge, but I have not bought a record (except test disks) since.

I am in this mainly for the music, which in my case is predominantly large-scale orchestral. My curiosity in vinyl was piqued by the high prices the Garrard can command, so I thought I'd spend a bit of time and money to give it a good shot at impressing me.  Like you, I am astonished at the plinths available which do not include covers.  My Garrard is in a 1970s hollow plinth from SME, with a suspended mounting board.  I am building an internal plinth to basically fill up the hollows.  By raising or lowering the internal plinth, I expect to be able to switch between a fully solid plinth and a suspended design.

Results so far are promising, in the sense that I sometimes think to myself "If I heard this playing at a hi-fi show I would be impressed".

@richardbrand IMHO, you should dress it up and sell it then get a better amp or digital processor. The only reason to have a turntable is if you have a lot of records. If you do not, I always suggest you spend the money on digital music. Those of us that are older and have a ton of records have a psychiatric illness, megavinylosis. It is a lifelong illness responsible for the consolidation of trillions of tons of petroleum, rice paper and cardboard, enough energy to light up NYC for a decade. On the bright side it also sequestered tons of CO2. That's great marketing slogan, Save the Environment, Buy Records.  

@mijostyn   Not half as good as, "Digitally perfect sound." Guess that's why all CD players sound alike.

@mijostyn My gut feel is that you are right, but I do have a few records not available on silver disk that carry deep meaning for me on the rare occasions that I play them.  Then there is all the hype about analogue versus digital which I'd like to get to the bottom of!
Can I ask what your table, arm, cartridge and phono stage are, please?