From the Linn /AR philosophy of a simple felt mat to the Sota Supermat, whose material is a sister impedance to vinyl, and when combined with their vacuum system creates a 22 lb record!
A series of squishy, deadening mats arrived from Canada in about the early eighties, the Platter Matter, Roundel, Platter Pad and later the Audioquest Sorbogel made the scene. I can remember the rep demonstrating the Platter Matter, he would sprinkle salt on a record and tap it with a pen.The salt of course would bounce all over the place. Next, he placed the record on his mat, tapped, and the salt didn't move.
The naturally adhesive properties of this were such that you often picked up the mat with the record when taking it off, and it was not light! The mat supplied with the Oracle tables, The Groove Isolator was very similar, coincidentally also a Canadian product.
An extreme was Micro Seiki's solid copper mat, pictured above, which still commands a high price on the used market today.There also are a variety of carbon fiber, brass, and even shale(!) materials that have been used.
Lastly , the Ringmat, that I never completely understood the concept of, but it was and is extremely popular. Cork rings glued to cotton flocking on a small 10" mat. Some had holes, some didn't. The cork rings almost always came unglued. Think I tried this once and sold it. Guess I am from a different school.....
My takeaway from turntable mats in general was they sounded pretty much like what they were made out of. If they were soft and dead, they sounded soft and dead. If they were hard and brittle, well , you get the point. I think the squishies were best suited to direct drive tables. The Oracle being the possible exception. Whether you use a clamp with them or not, and what type makes as much if not more difference than the mat itself, as I will discuss in the next section.
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