Anyone notice different amounts of surface noise with different arms?

The name "tone-arm" says it all!  If they are neutral, they would be called pick-up arms or similar.

May I make a suggestion!  To eliminate cartridge set up variables, play a silent track, that is one containing no musical information, so no VTA adjustment, tracking force, or overhang comes into the equation.  The groove contains nothing but inherent vinyl noise, plus any extraneous wear and tear.  I use a test disk from Analogue Productions "The ultimate analogue test LP". 

The output is turntable noise plus record noise.  For analysis, I feed the microphone output from my pre-amplifier into the audio jack on my laptop, using the first free (home use only) analysis software I found on the web, WavePad by NCN Software.

Come to think of it, I have not seen a waterfall graph published for ages - about the time magazines stopped publishing useful stuff like speaker impedance curves.

I heard the same cartridge (Transfiguration Orpheus L) on the same table (Linn LP12) with two different arms (Naim  ARO and Basis Vector 3).  The Naim ARO was a livelier sounding arm, but, surface noise was a little bit more prominent.  In this particular system, I preferred the Naim ARO.  I cannot say that set up was perfect each time, but, a good protractor, digital scale and Fozgometer azimuth tool was employed, so setup was pretty accurate.

Thanks @larryi. I've been playing with setup a bit today and it's definitely making a difference. I have been using a fixed SPU headshell with an Ortofon SL-15, which technically should be dead on with the Bokrand (the pivot to spindle is confirmed correct) but there was some small differences using a DB Systems protractor. The adjustments are making things better but still hearing the arm difference... but this is making it easier to overlook. Always tradeoffs!

@richardbrand Exactly right, the best arms do sound the same, like nothing. They have no sound at all. The sound is on the record. Cartridges are not supposed to sound either, they make an electric signal. The job of the tonearm is to position the cartridge over the record so it can do its job accurately and transfer that electrical signal without modification. Speakers make sound. Any sound made by the cartridge or tonearm is distortion. While some distortion is euphonic I am of the belief that all distortion is bad and should be minimized.