Anyone notice different amounts of surface noise with different arms?

@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?

@richardbrand I use a Sota Cosmos Vacuum table with a Schroder CB arm. My current cartridges are the Lyra Atlas Lambda SL, Ortofon MC Diamond, Soundsmith Hyperion MR and the Shure V15 V Jico SAS/B. The phono stages are the MM stage in the DEQX preamp and a Channel D Seta L Plus. 

You might consider have those few records digitized. Those of us with Channel D phono stages can do that for you at 24/192 resolution. I raid friend's record collections all the time.