Professional Turntable Setup ( Chicago area NW suburbs )

Yes of course I am confident. Just not in the way you seem to think. Like the guy who tapped on a plain old aluminum foil ball till it looks like a ball bearing there’s always the chance someone’s gone and done it crazy better than I ever thought possible. When I said I would pay to see it, with pleasure, that was not my way of saying no way, that’s my way of saying I would pay to see it, with pleasure!

Just because you get what you call "3D palpable sound" does not mean that you have achieved your vinyl rig’s true potential. Like I said, you may be damned close to perfect, but the difference between close and perfect is huge IMHO.

Well, its not "what you call". If that were the case I’d be an arrogant fool. Its what everyone who has sat and listened has called it. Its what even the most jaded audiophile I ever met called, "Swimming in it." Its what other audiophiles wives have said, "I could listen to this all night!" Audiophiles themselves, it turns out, are their own worst enemies. Their wives on the other hand....

The last part though, totally agree. Which is why I am so serious about I would pay to see it.

You know how you sometimes read about the type of guys who painstakingly tweak VTA for every record? I am that guy. Did it for years. In no time flat got so good its very rare a record came along I couldn’t set while playing the first side. Wrote it down on the sleeve.

So when I read about how great it is this guy sets SRA, which probably sounds just unbelievably impressive to a lot of guys I think, yeah, okay, what else? And keep looking for something I haven’t done. And, with a very few exceptions, coming up empty. Not that those few exceptions might not be what makes all the difference. In a world where raising cables up off the floor with telephone pole insulators makes a big difference anything is possible.

Possible. Might.

What I still have not heard though and still very much am interested in hearing is from someone like me who has been building and tweaking and thoroughly understands and has done everything he can and then has this guy come over and even that guy is impressed. Instead all I’ve seen is expensive systems. I don’t care about the expensive systems. Or how impressed the expensive system owners are. I care about extensive skills. And how impressed the extensively skilled are.

Unlike you I actually am doubting. Well my grandmother, she was born in Missouri. The Show Me state.

Fair enough. Why not ask Brian? E.g; "Mr. Walsh-have you ever gone to client’s home and determined that there was no improvement to be made?" or "Have you ever done your work only to have a customer say it sounded as good or better before?". And then there is this; do a search and see if Brian has one dissatisfied customer that has shared the discontent on this thing we have called the ’net. I suppose you will counter that people like yourself are far less likely to hire Brian in the first place. Good point actually. 
I suppose it stands to reason that there are a good number of vinyl enthusiasts who have turntable set-up down to an art/science leading edge level of competence. I mostly lack the patience. I get my cartridge aligned as best I can using a two grid protractor or the Feickert gauge and I adjust VTA and azimuth by ear and I of course double check VTF with two digital guages and then I pretty much call it a day. I have a Fozgometer which I calibrated but I think it is a pain in the ass to use and I have grown to distrust it. I am not anal enough to mark every record for VTA/SRA and even if I was, I would never bother to adjust it for every single record despite the fact that adjusting VTA on Reed arms is as easy as it can get (azimuth as well). 
I don’t know enough to have my opinions count. YET. Wait til two weeks from now and I will report back. But as you have noted, by experience won’t count for much because I can tell you have much better skills than I do.
Now I am really going to digress. I attended my first audio show recently-Axpona. I don’t think I will ever go again. It is almost depressing. Nope-it is absolutely depressing. So much fanfare, effort, expense, and all for so little. I didn’t see very much smiling by attendees or by exhibitors. It is not fun. It is work for both the exhibitors under impossible conditions and guests to manage the crowded elevators, hallways, and rooms. No wonder the better adjusted hosts had alcoholic beverages on hand. I would guess that roughly one fourth of the better rooms featured a vinyl rig. I would further guess that the exhibitors in these rooms did not sweat the turntable set up too much. Spending four hours to set up a deck that will only be disassembled in two days when an hour will get the deck close is the approach I suspect most took. Being a vinyl fan, I hate to admit this but in virtually every room that had both vinyl and digital at Axpona, I thought the digital sounded better. To the extent that there is any point here, the point would be that there is so much devil in the details with vinyl.

@millercarbon  Are there any guys who like me totally know what they're doing, totally know their rig was set up really, really good to begin with, who then were astounded to hear it brought to a whole new level?

I would highly doubt that people like you are his target audience.  There are many in this hobby who enjoy excellent performance but do not have the time, patience, knowledge, or ability, therefore, they contract this work out.  

Nobody's set up is so good someone can't find a way to make it better. Especially if that someone has had a hundred or more different situations to learn from first. This is after all an area where sometimes simply moving one lead a few inches further from another one can make a difference. Like the man said, even cartridge fastener torque matters.

But then in that case, my Show Me side says, the answer will be the ear, not the torque wrench. Mikey Fremer, instructed to trust the torque wrench and not his lyin' eyes crushed a cartridge when it turned out the wrench was bad. 

Real curious to know when he gets done with your tables how it went- what he did - and how it sounds.

Lots of comments here. fsonicsmith, good questions, especially whether anyone said it sounded better before than after I did my work. No. Not one. Never. Of course you don't have my client info, so to some extent it's a leap of faith. But I also stand behind what I do. Don't like it, don't pay the standard fee, at which point I undo it. I have a long list of satisfied clients, a few of which are on the website, and I have worked hard for years to earn my reputation. There are a handful of us who do this, and we share the passion and dedication.

Brian Walsh