Chris, you've inspired me to think more fully through the next revision of my OMT8 rig, which I've been planning on reworking for a while. See the attached PDF if interested.
The primary change will be the central support hub. The arms and overall geometry remain the same as before and I plan to stick with the black telescopic TV antennas for at least the outer portion of the L/R arms out to the omnis, but might switch to carbon fiber kite tubes for inner portion of those, or not. Also may use carbon tubes for the rear facing pair arms, since I don't actually telescope those in use. My most recent previous revision switched out the center forward-reaching telescopic TV antenna arm for a standard folding mic-clip, since like the rear-facing pair I no longer actually telescope it in use, and I plan to retain that standard folding clip so I can easily switch between the stereo shotgun I'm currently using in that position, the DPA/Naiant Mid/Side pair it replaced, or any other M/S pair I want to try.
The new single-piece central support structure will replace a stack of several aluminum arm supports I've used and reworked for over 15 years, supporting all five arm attachment points with the correct a pentagonal geometry, eliminating the need for little angle tweaks between arm pairs to get everything lined up right when deploying it on the stand, foot, or clamp or whatever. That should both simplify and streamline the arrangement, cleaning it up nicely.
The key component here is the pentagonal top plate (in orange in the PDF) to which all the arms attach. I'll probably build just that part first with a spigot stud on the bottom which mates to my various support options, the same as my current rig works.
But I've gone ahead and drawn it up with vibration isolation incorporated into it to reduce solid-borne noise transmission though the stand and cable. As mentioned, incorporation of suspension is really just something of a nice to have addition for me, but.. it will be nice to have, and this is an opportune time to consider it in the redesign. To do that the spigot stud gets moved from the top plate to a lower plate, which supports the top plate though 5 Sorbathane damping 'pucks' of sufficiently low durometer to be effective, positioned around the periphery of the top plate between arm attachment points so as to form a sufficiently wide support basis that hopefully keeps the top plate part and arms stable and not too wiggly. Bottom plate would be a spider or asterisk shape to allow the arms to fold down bewteen its notches for stowage / transport.
Also considering incorporating a multi-pin connector into the bottom plate, to which the cable bundle could be disconnected. Alternately, that will be a good place to incorporate Cat 5 /6 baluns which would eliminate the current cable bundle and further streamline things, but I'd still need two Cat 5 /6 cables to support all 8 channels.
I plan to fabricate this from aluminum plate, but also thinking it could be nicely 3d printed, using sufficiently tough materials such as whatever Scott at SRS uses.
PDF of the current concept is attached. The key illustrations are all on page 1. Page 2 is just an aesthetics comparison of a few different top plate shapes. I'm leaning toward the slightly starfish shaped version over the inflated pentagon.