Changed tubes & interconnects, now listening to platter mats?!

I have referred to in other posts the most impressed I have been from experiences of Signal Wire and Connections selected for the Cables. If the idea of building on this good experience takes hold, my posts might prove of interest.

When it comes to Platter Mats a lot can be learnt about tidying up the End Sound, as well as messing up the End Sound. 

My experience is that when investigating Platter Mats, it is best done in conjunction with learning how mounting methods for the TT impact on the End Sound.

No harm in finding a Platter Mat that impresses, and then look at TT mounting methods that enables more to be added by the Platter Mat. If this is a method adopted at some time, when new discoveries are made, do reintroduce a Platter Mat that may have been deselected from a previous  use. There are surprising outcomes. 

Has anything like this happened to you with a simple change in output tubes made your system more sensitive to the mat material used on your table?

@knownothing Yes. Most people don't realize that the LP itself resonates as the stylus tracks it. Because of this the LP 'talks back' and colors the sound. You can easily hear a poorly damped LP if you simply have the volume down and let the stylus track the LP. 

If its properly damped it will be silent. It will also sound better when the volume is up. The correct hardness of the platter pad is that of the vinyl itself. Too hard or too soft and certain frequencies will get some emphasis. 

The pad can damp the platter a bit too. These things are both audible and easy to measure. 

The best one I know of right now is made by Oracle in Canada. 

  Hi, your post caught my attention. I have a modded Thorens TD 160 with a Grado cartridge. I just went from a low powered single ended tube system to a high powered (180 wpc ) tube system. Unfortunately my Rogue Hera pre lacks a phono stage so I’ll be shopping for a phono stage. But what I wanted to add is that I just had my M-180 monos rebuilt to “ Dark “ status. In doing so there’s a tube upgrade and they each came back with new production Tung Sol gold pin 5751’s in place of the usual 12AX7’s. While doing some break in time I swapped the Tung Sols for a curve trace matched pair of NOS Telefunken smooth plates that are considerably more expensive. In doing so I too came to the realization of how good those new production Tung Sol’s are and put them back in. On my pre I have a gain knob with 5 level settings and found myself reducing the gain with the Telefunkens ( digital only at this point ).  My thought for you is if you experiment with mats and continue to have this issue the 5751’s are a compatible tube with a lower Mu factor. Plus they lower the noise floor Vs 12AX7’s. So maybe my off topic ramble will give you some food for thought if the mat issue continues. I’ll be following your thread as I need to get a phono stage and have a similar TT. Regards , Mike B. 

Interesting comments, thanks.  Yeah, these Tung-Sol Gold Pin tubes are for real.

I landed on a placing a Pro-Ject cork mat on the TD150mkII aluminum platter with an acrylic mat on top of that. Sounds great with the Tung-Sol tubes and slightly beat out the stock rubber mat for me. With the Gold Lion tubes, I liked the acrylic mat underneath a felt mat.  Go figure.  Using two mats allows me to remove one for 180-200g records and roughly preserve optimal VTA.

Brass platter - wow!  It would match the brass Mapleshade points under my TD150!!

kn