Good turntables w/o record clamps

The clamp is kind of a "tweak". As with all tweaks, there will be some who swear by it and some who hate it or are indifferent to its use. So, in the end with any table, it will be a matter of your own opinion based on your own listening. Having said that, I can tell you that my "new" Lenco is less affected by use of a clamp or record weight than any other table that I have ever owned. This observation is made while using Herbie's 2mm mat. With some other mat, I might come to a different conclusion.

Pawlowski, A clamp could (in theory) transmit bearing and/or motor noise into the record, causing smearing of the audio signal. Obviously, warped records might benefit from the use of a clamp. However, I own a Sota reflex clamp which is/was touted to flatten such records; in my experience there are very few LPs for which this flattening effect really works as described. Usually the warp is worst at the outer edge of an LP, and the center clamp does very little to help. Moreover, if the warp is to the up side of the LP, the clamp can do nothing to help.

Imin2u, It's interesting that Sota at least used to recommend use of their reflex clamp even on their products that sported vacuum hold-down.

Dcstep, Then you would agree with my inference that the decision to use a clamp will be in part determined by the nature of the record mat (or the absence of one in your case).

More controversial to me is the advent of ring clamps used to hold LPs down at their periphery. Seems like a great idea for really taming warps, but I am sure I would destroy my cartridge in very short order by snagging the stylus on the metal ring.