Yup,you guys were right... It did need a 1mm spacer. I think the issue I had with the Shimano spacer was that I'm using an SRAM cassette, and the Shimano spacer has little grooves to fit flush on a Shimano cassette. Yes,btw,my shifters etc are intended/setup for 9 speed, I'm running 1x9, 39t x 11-32. I want to thank all of you for jumping in to help me out. I literally could not have built this bike without this forum.