Phono Accessory Reviews

Going to the mat
An important question to ask is whether you need a record hold-down at all. Some turntable manufacturers are adamant that best performance is achieved by letting the record lie in its natural state, coupled only by its own mass and gravity, in conjunction, usually, with some type of compliant mat or interface. Felt mats are sometimes dismissed as cheap and static prone, but several serious turntable manufacturers continue to use them: Linn, Rega, Roksan. Over the decades, I've noticed, the mats supplied by all three companies have become progressively thinner, which I believe is aimed at providing firmer support for the record than the springy, squishy support a thick felt mat provides. In the early days of Rega, the key difference between the Planar 2 and the Planar 3 was the latter's 12mm-thick glass platter, which delivered better speed stability than the Planar 2's lighter 10mm one. To ensure that the arm height remained consistent, the Planar 2 used a slightly thicker felt mat. Forty-five years later, Rega still makes the Planar 2 and 3, but their mats are now paper thin.

Linn devotees can be a fickle bunch: They tend to reject accessories and mods that stray from the factory line—unless it comes from one of a handful of aftermarket suppliers who get an unofficial seal of approval. The Tangerine Audio Even-star damper mentioned above is a good example, and recently, a cloth mat was introduced for the LP12 under an old, classic British brand name: Collaro. The mat has received the stamp of approval from the Linn crowd. Rega has also chosen Collaro to supply the mats for their newest Naia, their flagship 'table.

Roksan has sought to elevate the basic felt mat with their R-MAT. With its stiffer, compressed felt, the R-MAT provides firmer support than the standard mat. Cutaway openings in the label area cause most of the record's weight to be supported in the playing area. Touraj Moghaddam, who founded Roksan but has since started a newer company, Vertere, believes most records will lie fairly flat if they are left unstressed by weights and clamps. For Vertere turntables, Moghaddam has taken this thinking a step further, with the Techno Mat, a two-layer design with a synthetic-felt top surface, to provide ideal cushioned support for the less-than-mirror-smooth record, while a cork/polymer underside helps to damp platter resonances.

The Techno Mat's design brings up an interesting point: The interface between the record and the mat is not the only one that matters. The mat can also damp the underlying platter to control ringing and other resonances. I recently set up a very high-end Dutch turntable called a Primary Control Kinea. I was struck that it came supplied with a standard, thick-rubber Technics mat (RGS0010A) rather than something more esoteric. I contacted Primary Control designer Bernd Hemmen, who told me that the Technics mat's ability to dampen the Kinea's aluminum platter gives it a performance edge over several more exotic mats he auditioned, including a bunch of custom prototypes.

Mats come in just about every type of material you can imagine, from hard copper (Artisan Fidelity) to leather, cork, rubber, and foam—plus acrylic, said to mimic the hardness and density of a record. And then there's the popular Funk Firm Achromat, which has tiny isolation bubbles designed to dissipate energy absorbed from the record. Many of these mats also come in various thicknesses, widths, and center-hole sizes.

I tend to prefer a mat with a little compliance at the record interface, as this helps to maximize the contact area. The Way Excellent II mat from Herbie's Audio Lab, which HR wrote about in the December 2022 issue, works great on my Technics SL-1200, and I've heard great results using the paper-thin but costly Stein Music Interface mat (above)on Dr. Feickert turntables.

There really is no universal "best" mat choice. It depends on the turntable it's being used on: on the platter material, whether the 'table is suspended, and on how robust the main bearing is, among other factors.

Keep Track of Stylus Wear with the Timerette
A lot of my turntable work involves replacing expensive cartridges broken by housekeepers, although, to be honest, I often feel the owners are just too sheepish to own up to their own clumsiness and are simply deflecting blame. But if a cartridge manages to survive the bumps and knocks of everyday use for long enough, eventually there will come a day when the stylus is just plain worn out.

Customers will often ask me how long they have before they reach that day, and my stock answer is usually around 1000 hours. But if you drill down a bit, you'll find that the answer depends on a number of factors including the stylus profile (finer line styli wear a bit faster, and it matters more), and the cleanliness of your records.

One thousand hours translates to about 1500 LPs, but it can be hard to keep track unless you're like Jim in New Jersey, one of my regular customers. He has a notebook near his turntable, and he keeps a detailed log of every record he plays and which of his five cartridges he used to play it. (He has cleaned every one of his 10,000+ records using an Audio Deskultrasonic cleaner; he's now on his third after wearing out two of them.)

I doubt most of us can match Jim's fastidiousness. What we really need is an automated way to keep track of the hours. That's exactly what the Timerette is designed to do.

Phono cartridge timers have been around for a while; I'm thinking of the very affordable StylusTimer. But with the StylusTimer, the user must remember to turn it on and off at the beginning and end of each record side. Forgetting to turn it on occasionally would be no big deal—but I would eventually forget to stop it at the end of a listening session, and it would keep on clicking away the hours and days until I next played a record.

At $130, the Timerette costs as much as a handful of StylusTimers, but it is far more foolproof. The Timerette comes from Portugal-based Semper Sonus, the same people who make the Shaknspin platter speed analyzer I wrote about in Spin Doctor #1. They have cleverly figured out a way to automate starting and stopping the timer, making it perfect for those of us who don't have Jersey Jim's obsessive attention to detail. A pair of tiny stick-on magnets are supplied with the timer. You attach them opposite each other on the rim of your platter. The timer sits on the turntable plinth near the edge of the platter and automatically starts timing when it senses the magnets whizzing past. When you stop the platter, the timer switches itself off. Clever.

Positioning the thumb-sized Timerette will depend on your turntable, but most 'tables will have a suitable spot somewhere on the plinth. The rounded end needs to be pointing toward the platter edge so that it can pick up the pulses as the magnets zip by. With some turntables, placement can be challenging. My Brinkmann LaGrange has no plinth per se, but I found I could set the device on the armpod next to the base of the arm. With my SME 30, I needed to set the Timerette on a small block to lift it to a sufficient height near enough to the platter.

Once it's positioned, the Timerette is ready to go. When you start the platter turning, the device waits a few turns before switching itself on before it starts counting. During normal use, the four-digit hour display stays off to save battery power, but you can see the total at any point by pressing the only button on the unit. The Timerette says that the two AAA batteries have a "very long" life, a good thing considering how many years it can take to wear out a stylus. If your batteries do run down, they can be changed without losing the accumulated total.

When the time comes to replace the cartridge or stylus, the Timerette can be reset to zero hours by holding down the button for a couple of seconds.

With its automated operation, the Timerette is effectively a set-and-forget device, ready to report your stylus hours whenever you are curious. I see no potential problems, unless you're the type of person who likes to leave the platter spinning. Decades ago, I worked for British hi-fi manufacturer Roksan; their earliest turntables had no way to turn them off short of unplugging the power supply from the wall. The designer felt that the turntable sounded better when the platter bearing and motor were fully warmed up, so they were designed to spin 24/7. After some customer complaints, a power switch was added. Another 'table that might not work with the Timerette is the original Thorens TD 124; even if you could find a place to put the Timerette, the Thorens's recessed platter would leave no room for the magnets, and even if there was room, the spinning magnets would hit the platter-lift lever.

Unless you are the proud owner of a 1986 vintage Roksan Xerxes, the Timerette should work fine for you, and it's a great tool for dispelling some of the guesswork about stylus life