Playing with the "no mat" mat.

Wayner · « **on:** 11 Nov 2011, 07:59 pm »

I have liked the sound of the Empire for many, many years. Some of this sound, or lack of it, is from the mat design. Empire mats found on the 598 and 698 series were molded black rubber. The unique thing was that these mats supported the record only from the very outer edge. The Empire could play 3 different size records, 12, 10 and 7", and each record size had it's own support. This was accomplished by lowering the height of each outer support band so that is was clear of the the outer one(s). This design seems to minimize transferred platter noise (and perhaps belt/motor noise) and made the playback very quiet. It also had a side-effect, in that it helped reduce record warp, because the record was only supported at the outer edge, the weight of the record helped to minimize the warp.

So I finally found some suitable tape gasket and did the outer edge treatment to ARMod. Since ARMod is only a single speed table, and I have no 10" 33 1/3 lps, the single band is enough.

You may want to give this a try.

Wayner

sebrof · « **Reply #1 on:** 12 Nov 2011, 01:30 am »

Interesting, looks like it's worth a try.
Where did you source the gasket?

Thanks for sharing.

Wayner · « **Reply #2 on:** 12 Nov 2011, 01:44 pm »

Menards. It's made by Denison 1/4 x 1/8" thick.

Wayner

Letitroll98 · « **Reply #3 on:** 12 Nov 2011, 02:39 pm »

Similar in theory to the popular Ringmat and various homemade "Spot Mats", I've also found great improvements using this type of mat. Usually makes the most difference on undamped metal platters in my experience. In addition to lower noise floors, I also noted an increased liveliness to the sound, i.e a Pro-ject sounded more like a Rega. Did you notice this Wayne? Didn't work well on well damped platters like my VPI MKIII.

Wayner · « **Reply #4 on:** 12 Nov 2011, 04:46 pm »

It certainly is lively. I am running it thru a proto-type tube phono preamp that also likes to spell it out, all to my advantage. I'm doing some archival recording of my vinyl collection with this table right now, and they sound very good.

I'm reluctant to try the gasket on my VPI's acrylic platter as the glue on the gasket is pretty sticky and I would not recommend that anyone try that on those types of platters.

So far, so good.

Wayner