Vintage DD turntables. Are we living dangerously?

"SAEC’s SS-300 mat is aluminum, anodised black and then coated with a very thin ( and very strong ) teflon coating

"The success of the mat is in its cut-outs in the physical design as well as the coating which stops ringing and is gentle on records as well as being anti-static and balanced

"Long out-of-production, I’ve tried dozens of mats and the SAEC is a keeper." Rtatts

Good new info, thanks. I was in the dark, never knew.

I’ve been using one for close to 30 years. I never heard of it when I found one in a Thrift shop for $5. I figured it got separated from its TT, and dutifully searched for it to reunite them. If the TT was worthy of the mat, they would be a score at Thrift shop prices and I’d grab them both. If it was a mismatch, they’d be cheap and I’d grab them either way. But there wasn’t a single turntable there, of any description, just the mat alone.

$5 for the SAEC is petty theft, and for all my faults I’m not petty. I even explained to the Cashier it was underpriced and he said "Five bucks or shut up."

I won’t say it’s the best, with 100,000 other mats out there to try... but I don’t need the best: very good is good enough for me.

And that tip about the tiny hole+pin to keep records from moving? Fabulous! There’s NOTHING worse than an LP slipping! Tracking at 1.4g, needle-drag can shift the groove .00000000324mm retrograde before you know it, and ANY good ear can hear the tempo go kablooey, not to mention the pitch.

I start drilling tomorrow. With a CAD-Drillpress and a 5-metre long 1mm bit I can do 5000 LPs at once.

A tiny hole in the mat near the spindle hole made to fix the lightweight SAEC MAT to the turntable spindle/platter, not to fix the MAT to the RECORD @bimasta 

But you have no idea how it works because you never seen SAEC manual and those parts are missing. Those holes are connected by very thin and flat metal bridge screwed to the mat, and it's under the record. 

RAUL disagrees with you, Chak —

"That tiny hole at the inner position in the SS300 is not to fix it to the spindle. SAEC makes a research about and they found out that the LP/records tend to slide through a metal mat surface so its advice is that with a small nail use that hole to fix the LP to the mat and for this you have to make a tiny hole on each LP at exactly the metal mat hole position then and before play you insert the tiny nail in the LP through the metal mat hole. In this way the mat and LP spins at unison/evenly."

Neither seems worth the bother to me, or even the few seconds to think about it. And note it could be done with any other mat regardless of the material, and no one ever bothered.

I will never puncture my precious golden age vinyls or expensive MoFi prints for such bullshits....baaaahhhh.