DIY soft-felt record platter-mat

I love listening to vinyl on my "mass-fi" Sanyo console stereo. It really not that bad of a stereo, lots of features, but the turntable, like other cheapos, is lacking. Instead of having a nice solid CLUNK when you tap it, the thin , plastic platter rings and vibrates.
Of course also this vibration also rears its head when your trying to play a lp with lots of upper-frequency noise. It was utterly terrible, and the hi-freq resonance was horrible! Bass was almost non-existant.

When I got tired of Ric Ocasek singing "Sssssssppp" on every "s" sound, I figured it was time to create a record mat!

Step 1: Gather materials

What you will need-

High-quality felt, you will only need two 1' by 1' pieces.

Nice, vibrant Sharpie

A pattern LP (DONT USE A GOOD ONE!!!)

SHarp Scissors

Comments

[JVC-Force]

Using rubber mat would improve sound (it should not be too thick, since the tonearm's height is not adjustable). But I understand that this felt record mat would be better without anything between the turntable and record. Using a disc stabilizer (record clamp) would also help improving the sound. Please someone post howto make a good DIY record clamp LP disc stabilizer!

[anakuron]

The idea of slipmat is that you can spin the record freely against the rotating direction of the platter, you can't really scratch with the rubber plate.

What I didn't know was that it could make any records sound better, the slipmat is definitely thicker than what you made. My friend has a really cheap record player, and it sounds horrible, I'll try if it sounds any better with slipmat, thanks for sharing this.

[geertbis]

Good idea, but you can also buy nice looking so-called 'slipmats' to put on your platter. They are for sale in DJ-shops and in recordshops that sell 12 " records for DJ's. It makes it a lot easier en nicer to look at and you can buy them for 10 euro's or less.

[rimar2000]

Nice, but it don't must be too tall, because then the the pick-up's touch angle changes. Pardon my English, if you don't understand, here is the same in Spanish: Muy bonito, pero no debe ser demasiado alto, porque entonces cambia el ángulo de toque del pick-up.