Funk Firm APM Record Mat

Description

Funk Form APM Turntable Mat

Achromat and APM - The very best mat for your Vinyl.

Platters on so many decks are flimsy, and as a result they RING: 99.9% of ALL 1970 decks are guilty. You can easily prove it to yourself. Hang it from one finger and tap it. It will "Klong". The Japanese designed decks to a price and saved money everywhere they could – in this case, thin platters! (less material, less weight / cost  in shipping. You don’t need to be in a disco environment for the platter to play along with the music, after all, its sitting directly under the stylus. Any movement and the stylus picks it up. No one really cared or thought about the negative effect from thin platters. When Technics did, their solution was thick rubber, but they didn’t think it through. Compared to metal, rubber is soft, sort of like using a blanket to kill the ringing of the energy. Instead of ringing, 1200 platters  “Klong”!

Unsurprisingly, the list of decks with thin platters is truly enormous. The following then is but a small sample: Technics: ALL their 70s  models – belt and DD, SL1200s mk II-VII, GR; Pioneer: All their 1970s models (PL12D style and DD models) and PLX 1000, which has been copied from SL1200; Audio Technica: AT-LP140XP etc; Since the Japanese effectively copied one another we have a long generic list of belt and DD models, including those from Sansui SR222 and any number of Japanese brands – Sony, Yamaha, Trio and so on.

In 2014, Funk developed Strata, a really good platter, but it was expensive. This was soon followed (copied?) by Technics in 1200G, GAE, SP10R etc. These substantial platters and may be pretty good, only, they also come with a substantial price tag!

APM For all variants

What to do? Do you throw your deck away? Actually NO. The fact is these 70s decks are basically reasonably well engineered only no one had the resources to sort them out. At the same time magazines earn money by promoting what’s new, but make no mistake, these decks, despite weaknesses, they do have good points: Good speed, good bearings and more.

Enter Funk’s Isolation Bubble technology. Its 21st century solutions truly transform just about all these decks. With a bit of TLC (tender loving care) these decks can once again become a real powerhouse and achieve Isolation Bubble stated goal: To get your records sounding closer to the master tape. It makes sense, after all you’re only spending money on the important bits that relate to sound. Better components but less money.

In the case of platters, the solution is Funk's APM. Achromat bonded to a glass sub-plate (it DOES fit inside the lip of all lipped platters!). Glass is hard so unlike a blanket it can control platter resonances. With APM your turntable now delivers the same degree of rigidity as G or GAE, but at a fraction of the price. (£200 v £4000!)

A 1200 or GR, PL12D or Sony or… All can now have the same platter performance as a £4-5k deck! Here’s the incredible thing: Putting APM on a G / GAE, the results are even quieter, so now G customers are buying APMs!