Nobody makes a proper clamp so I had to build one myself. It has been improved since these pictures were taken but the key features are the same.
Two main features: the thick washer that fits over the spindle, and the under side of the clamp is dished out. Really need to take more and better pictures because this subject keeps coming up.
dover- Dont know where you've been for the past 40 years but reflex style clamps/washers have been around since the 80's
Don't know where you've been for the past 400 years, dover, but "proper" never has meant "reflex" not in any dictionary I have ever seen. But I tell you what, since you want to argue so much, find me the clamp you think is "proper" as described above. One that clamps the record down so flat and secure it has to be lifted by the edges after playing. You find that one for me, post a link like I did for mine. That way I can explain in detail what you missed and why it is, compared to mine, not a proper record clamp.
There is a series of posts on the VPI discussion site that tells of a modification where you use 2 dimes opposite the spindle on the record, then put the weight on, then put the ring clamp on. I do that with mine....makes a significant step up.
Yes. I started out with tricks like that.
One of my early tweaks was ordinary washers. The inside of most platters is so dished out that records can't be clamped much or the center depresses and the outer edge gets jacked up. My first Basis reflex clamp (that dover somehow thinks I don't know about, even though I owned one, 30 years ago) used an O-ring around the spindle. That allowed a little bit of clamping, but not much or the O-ring compressed and the edge pushed up. So one of the first mods I tried was different washers. Larger O-rings, plastic, brass, steel. Tried them with tape, Blu-tack, etc.
The one now is carbon fiber, with fO.q tape on either side. There's also a ring of fO.q tape around the edge of the clamp. The clamp is also carbon fiber. So when clamped records are held in place with this eminently advanced vibration control tape and carbon fiber, tight and perfectly flat on the platter.
So all dover has to do is find another proper carbon fiber clamp. Not cheap aluminum, plastic, or wood. Carbon fiber. With advanced vibration control hold-down. Not O-rings, not dimes and washers. That works in a system that fastens records as securely as a vacuum hold down system.
That's all.