DIY Soft-felt Record Platter-mat

Intro: 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

STEP 2: Mark!

Take the record and lay it on your felt, trace the circumference of the LP.
While holding the LP in position, clearly mark the spindle hole onto the felt

OPTIONAL:

Repeat step on another piece of felt to make a second "layer" of mat.

STEP 3: Cut!

Cut the circumference of the marked line on both mats.


Spindle hole(s)

fold the mat in half through its line of symmetry, CAREFULLY cut a small "V" notch on the marked hole. MAKE SURE the cut is exactly centered on the mark, or you will have to do some major trimming!

STEP 4: Place and LISTEN to the Improvement!!!

On any thin-plastic, mass-fi table, this WILL make an improvement in sound. I was totally amazed when I flipped one of my albums on the newly-deadened platter. The bass was tightened and more pronounced, and the hi-frequency resonance was cut down tremendously (not TOTALLY)

All in all, this cost me about 50 cents in material, and is one thing to do before you can afford a real, good, turntable. It suits me just fine for now!


Hope you enjoyed this, please rate and comment, feel free to ask questions!

I will be making a record clamp also to compliment this mat soon!

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.