Any thoughts on a solid hickory platform under my tt

Hickory is of walnut family, I never tried it. If it does something wrong you will hear it. I use 3" maple under my Nottingham, works well. If I wanted to experiment, the first wood I would try would be rosewood, preferably Brazilian rosewood.

I am not sure either. But I guess of the inexpensive woods it sounds better in most cases. Cherry, as an example, would probably cost more let alone Brazilian rosewood, cocobolo or African blackwood.
Even Michael Green who is an advocate of resonance control tunable speakers and rooms used to make Justarack racks with thick maple shelves. Mapleshade does this too.

It appears that unlike cables audiophiles just don't experiment with this. It is kind of surprising because the difference may not be subtle, especially when comparing maple to exotic woods. Turntables are really sensitive things and minor changes anywhere are easily heard. I simply don't have funds for this, exotic woods are quite expensive.
Albert, good to hear from you. Do you wish to compare woods under turntable for all of us? Of course, different tables may react differently but still..

The key point is tuning not simply isolation.

That's why I mentioned rosewood as the next wood I would try after maple. Then cherry. Both are musical woods. Mahogany is another wood worth trying, would probably be too warm for my set-up. The place that you mentioned has purpleheart block for about $500. That's what I said - exotic wood is expensive if you want to compare even a few. I might try cherry, even if the difference was small it would be worth it. And if it makes things worse, well, I could use an excellent cutting board in the kitchen.

Oleschool, you are not thinking of tearing it off and trying it under your turntable?

bdp24, how would you explain the fact that many like maple under their turntables? According to your point of view, this should not be the case. Anyway, this is a very old argument, mostly concerning how speakers should be made.

As always, ebm has the most impecable ear of us all.

I use MM cartridge.
I also use one Walker Audio 1/2" resonance control disc placed on the maple platform next to but not touching the turntable motor. It tightens things up a little. But when I placed the second disc next to where tonearm was, it made the sound worse, though it certainly absorbed more energy. So, I still think that tuning in a general sense of the word is the way to go.