Hi all, The stock mat on my 1210gr sounds fine, but I am having trouble with shorter cartridges as I cannot adjust the height quite low enough. I don't want to mess with spacers on the headshell so I thought I might just upgrade the mat itself. Even 1mm more might be fine... So does anyone have any recommendations on mats 4+ mm thick that would be a nice upgrade over the stock one? Thanks!
Thanks, I have also heard recommendations for the funkfirm achromat or the herbies way excellent II. Anyone have any experiences with these?
I'm a big fan of the Oyaide Br-12. 5mm thick, but it ideally needs to be used with a clamp because it is very slightly concave on purpose.
I had a funkfirm achromat for my 1200MK2 and found it to be terrible. In your specific case I might try a thin cork mat under the stock Technics mat (not sure if that would be slippy or not).
OK, funkfirm is out. Looks like right now its between the herbies or the oyaide br-12 (and I guess with the br-12 I would have to get a weight too).
I would argue that you don't have to use a weight. You can still put an LP on the BR-12 and it'll play fine, you just miss out on the benefit of using a weight or clamp to mate the LP to the barely concave BR12, which very effectively helps to flatten wavy records.
Foe whatever reason I ended up with a 3mm all cork on bottom, a 1mm Washi paper mat, then the stock mat on top. This works fine.
I have both a 4mm Herbie’s and the BR-12. I currently use the BR-12 because I like being able to clamp the record down flat. Both sound good and solve the VTA problem. IMO, sonically, the only way in which either of these is an upgrade from the stock mat is, indeed, the ability to clamp out very slight warps with the BR-12. But, you do add steps to the workflow of playing a record if you are clamping and unclamping each side. I don’t find it particularly cumbersome (and the clamp just lives on the spindle when I’m not using the turntable), but it’s something to consider before buying anything.
Yea, I have a somewhat similar mat on my Micro Seiki BL-91, an old Hiraoka Disk SE-22 mat, which also has a slightly concave surface, and also uses some type of high density filler in the natural rubber to increase mass. The Hiraoka is also 5mm thick, but about twice the mass of the Oyaide. Works really well, pretty neutral sounding, not as highly damped as the more normal soft rubber mats, it is quite a bit harder. It is bigger in diameter, I think around 303mm, so fits the Micro platter well, but has an angled edge so is smaller than the record at the playing surface and still easy to remove. It's too big in diameter to use on my DD-40 or I'd probably try to find another one, ideally that one should be 295mm or less to avoid overhanging the platter edges. I like the idea of the Herbies, silicone foam is close to an ideal interface in my mind since it is mostly air, and in the past I've often used just air for the mat, but then they put the rubber stuff on top, which I'm not as much a fan of. And the mass is so low, you give up quite a bit of rotational inertia when substituting the foam for the much heavier standard rubber mat. So it's a bit of a trade-off, but I think most find for the better. I do have some silicone foam sheet that I've been meaning to cut a mat from to do some experiments, another project in the background, it's unfortunately not black or I probably would've already tried it.
Thanks so much everyone, I ended up ordering a 5mm thick herbies (285mm diameter so it fits the technics). I think this thickness will give me the most cart choices that are within the VTA adjustment range of the 1210gr. As long as it is no worse than the stock one I will be happy .
The Funk Firm mat for the 1200 or 1210GR is the APM and not the Achromat. Everyone agrees that the Achromat is not a good fit for these decks. I ordered the APM and will report back with the results once I receive it.
When using mats for additional height I've had the best results with the Origin Live mat. The mats are thin, extremely uniform throughout their area, and they don't slip. Works perfectly under the stock Technics mat, works perfect under the stock Rega mat, and it works perfectly under accessory mats from FunkFirm, Tonar, CorkIt, Hudson and a few more that I've tried. I agree with @Rolltide - IME, the FunkFirm mats in various thicknesses promise much (according to FunkFirm and its retailers) but deliver far less and too often don't even measure up to the stock mat on a given turntable. I use now-spare FunkFirm mats as dust covers.
Cork has a lot of air as well, which was my reasoning behind using it as a sandwich beneath the stock mat. The paper Washi between them is just a neutral layer (and I don't have to store it anywhere else). I also have the Origin Live mat on an acrylic platter on my other TT, if the Technics platter were acrylic I would heartily recommend that mat as it really excels on acrylic (it was intended to be used on acrylic platters).
Just put an older Technics mat (6mm) on my 1200g. It is noticable difference (less single poking out of the top of the record). Arm looks a little more level to me. But, I'm asking myself why they designed this table with a 3mm mat when the thicker ones seem to improve tone arm height?
So I wound up with a bunch of different platter mats and tried them all, both by themselves and in various combinations. By far my favorite is the Funk Firm Achromat on top of the Origin Live mat. They work beautifully together!
