Record mats for vintage tts

Boston mat is really very good in most applicatons

Hi Lew, we use the Oracle mat for the model 208. Its a hellava lot better than the stock mat. The best mats were made by Warren Gehl of ARC some 20 years ago. They were pricy and hard to make, but they worked beautifully. Once you've heard one, you know what I say they are the best. Not many were made, and they typically take about $800-$1K when they turn up.

I have had two different Herbie's mats on two different TTs. A standard Herbie's replaced the felt mat on an older LP12 and his thickest mat has now replaced a rubber mat on my LT-30. I just picked up (here on Audiogon) a vintage (year not use) EON Isolation mat. It seems like it has layers of isolation with a thin cork-type top layer. I can't use it because it isn't thick enough and suggests the use of a record clamp with it. If you're interested in it, email me. otherwise, I strongly suggest Herbie's mats.

to properly judge any mat you need to somehow insure it is not moving around even a little. if one is stable but another less so you won't know what the mat itself is actually doing.

maybe some double-backed tape, Elmers Glue, or light spray of artist's glue. something that lays perfectly flat and insures the mat will not shift at all.....and can be easily cleaned off without issues.

i'm using the Boston Audio Mat 1 on the 301 and it sounds better since i secured it. i have not compared the Boston mat to anything other than the stock 301 mat; no contest the Boston Mat is better. the Boston mat is made of a particularly slippery material and does slide easily on a metal platter.

Ralph, That's a pretty dogmatic approach, but thanks for your post. The Herbie's is "rubber", or something that looks and feels like rubber. The BA Mat 1 is graphite, which would seem on principle to be a good idea. Both have their admirers. Lenco Lovers say good things about the stock Lenco mat, which is a ribbed rubber design. If you read the owner's manual for my Denon DP80, they go to great lengths to say how the mat was specially designed and formulated to work well with the table and they advise against using any other mat. It's a heavy rubbery material with varying density from outer to inner. I'm just wondering what folks are using with vintage tts. Do you use the stock Empire mat with your Empire? Mats are certainly a black art. By the way, what mat is going to be so soft and spongy as to depress under the <2gm weight of the stylus, which force is distributed across the surface of a rigid vinyl LP?

platter pads are tricky. Rubber isn't right- that's for sure. The pad has to control resonance in the LP, while at the same time not depressing under the weight of the needle, and, if possible, contribute to dampening the platter. Rubber simply is not good at this at all, nor is felt.

Not many pads can do that in fact. Acrylic is too hard, and tends to be bright as resonance in the vinyl in not well controlled. The problem is that there really is not a lot out there that is in production. One of the better mats is made by Oracle, but IMO this is an area where DIY can produce some prodigious results, once the requirements I outlined above are met.