Arm Board levelling: is this good enough?

Coming from an almost cost no object tooling and measurement background ( think F-22, B2… etc ) I doubt  your tool. I agree w Lew on seeking same result from platter and armboard . Finally, I love your posts and adventures with multiple arms and pods. I just added a 2nd Brinkmann Bardo and am also working an arm pod DIY project. Best in music to you !!!!!

jim

If the inclinometer is off, at least it confirms the platter and the armboard are parallel.

The thing that surprises me is that all three agree with each other and the platter!

I'll get around to doing the other table one of these days.

The most important thing is that it sounds good.  Remember your records themselves are not all perfectly flat either.  Being off by such a small amount is insignificant given the overall vagaries that are inherent in vinyl playback mechanisms overall.

The most important thing is that it sounds good. 

Really.

If the armband is not level the arm is constrained.

You worry about 0.1g tracking - an out of level arm board has a large impact on the bearings and arm motion, not to mention the unbalanced forces on the cantilever.

What do you do when the cantilever is bent or stylus worn more on one side - do you turn it around to wear out the other side ????

That is why I regard the arm board being level with respect to azimuth (it is) as more important because that will cause uneven wear and likely not sound good. The 0.1° error is the armboard tilted sightly down towards the table which if it has any effect is going to make the arm want to move towards the middle of the side of a record, in effect slightly increasing skating force for the first few tracks, then decreasing it for the last few tracks. Well, I already have to accept that anti-skating force is only correct at one point on a side, and as Bill says, a warp in the record will cause far more variation from ideal.