The fact of the matter is that I do appreciate that you contributed to improving the tonearm. I only got my tonearm a couple of months ago, so I didn't know the history of it all.
08-22-10: Dougdeacon
the publication of suggestion #6 here is what inspired Tri-Mai to add that small, threaded VTF weight. You apparently got one and your gratitude is duly noted!
As to your other comment:
I tried to make clear that it is not my business to tell people that they aren't hearing what they say they are hearing. My inquiry tends to focus on whether I can make sense of what other people are saying; things that make sense to me are more persuasive than things that don't make sense to me. I must say that the fact that other people say that they can "hear the difference" is not particularly persuasive because you always have to watch out for the "emperor's new clothes" phenomenon in which one person says something, and then other people possibly convincing themselves that it is true because they saw it in writing somewhere. The reason for my skepticism is that in this forum, I have read incorrect statements made by people who assert the authority of the statements on the basis that others had written the same thing, or that they saw it in a wikipedia entry, and so forth. While the Internet is a good source of information, one of the problems with the Internet is that incorrect information can get propagated, and then acquire a certain measure of authority by the mere fact that it was repeated.
As for theoretical arguments that the damping trough is quite rigid and "shouldn't" need to be removed, I'll refer you to the dozens of owners who've actually tried it. Not one has failed to hear improvements such as I described.
Whether you choose to try it yourself or not is up to you of course, but theoretical objections won't convince anyone who's actually heard the difference.