Halcro,
Thanks for the kind words. Regarding the plinths tried, I tried a birch, aluminium and acrylic composite plinth. I also tried various directly coupled arm boards. These included ones made of birch/aluminium, ash and MDF.
Of the armboards, the ash was the best performer (in view of the achievements and criteria that I have used for the nude approach). The bespoke plinth is of my and my artisan brother-in-law's design. It performed well but the experiment with the nude and stand-alone approach has meant that we're back to the drawing board and trying to see if we can incorporate some of the apparent lessons into a new design.
This is only an exercise to see what is really possible (plinth wise) for those who MUST have a more traditional arrangement. However, given financial and time constraints at present, it might be quite some time before any advances are made on this front. When they are and assuming that the results are worth noting, I'll definitely feed back.
In truth and thanks largely to your and Raul's initial suggestions, the nude and stand alone approach are (as I've sought to explain) all that I could wish to achieve.
