Felt or rubber: which turntable mat should you use?
Felt slips and rubber grips. That one difference decides nearly everything else.
Felt slips, rubber grips. If you ever hold a record still by hand, felt is the only answer and the comparison is over. If you never touch a spinning record, both work, and the choice comes down to damping, static and how easy the mat is to keep clean. Felt holds more loose dust but sheds charge more readily; rubber wipes clean but traps charge on the record above it.
Two materials account for almost every turntable mat in use: felt and rubber. They are not variations on a theme. They behave in opposite ways, and the way you use your turntable decides which behaviour you want.
What is the difference between a felt and a rubber mat?
One slips and one grips. Everything else follows from that.
Felt is a nonwoven fabric: fibres matted together under heat and pressure rather than woven into a structure. The surface is a field of fibre ends, so a record resting on it touches thousands of tiny contact points and nothing continuous. It holds position under its own weight and releases the moment you push it.
Rubber is a solid elastomer. The record sits on a continuous surface with real friction, and the two move as one object. That is a virtue if you want the record coupled to the platter and a problem if you want to move it.
Which one slips?
Felt, by a distance. This is not a marginal advantage; it is a different capability.
Holding a record still while the platter keeps turning underneath is the whole basis of beatmatching and of every cue a DJ makes by hand. On rubber it cannot be done: the record goes where the platter goes. If you cue, mix or scratch, the comparison ends here, and the reason the slipmat exists at all is this one property.
If you only ever press start and let a side play, slip is worth nothing to you and you should judge the two on what follows.
Which one damps better?
It depends on what you are damping, and the honest answer is that the gap is smaller than either camp claims.
A platter is a rigid disc being turned by a motor, and rigid discs resonate. Both materials put something soft between that resonance and the record. Rubber has more mass and more internal loss, so on a thin stamped-steel platter it does measurably more. Dense felt does most of the same job at a fraction of the thickness, and on a heavy cast platter there is less for either to fix.
Mass is also a cost. A thick rubber mat adds real weight to the platter, which matters on a light belt-driven deck whose motor and bearing were specified without it. We go further into how much of this you can actually hear in do slipmats improve sound quality.
Which one holds less static?
Neither prevents it, and they fail in different directions.
Static on a record comes from the triboelectric effect: two materials in contact exchange charge when they separate. Lifting vinyl off a mat in a dry room is exactly that event. Felt is porous and mildly hygroscopic, so it carries a little ambient moisture and gives charge a path to leak away. Rubber is a good insulator, which means charge that forms on the record stays on the record.
Low-density felt has its own version of the problem: loose surface fibre charges, lifts and lands on the record. High-compression felt has far less of it. The full picture, including the one thing that helps more than any mat, is in why records pick up static.
Which one stays cleaner?
Rubber, plainly. You wipe it and it is clean.
Felt holds dust in its surface, and a mat that holds dust presses that dust into the label side of every record you play. This is the strongest argument rubber has, and it is a real one. It is also the easiest to neutralise: a lint roller over the mat takes about ten seconds, and cleaning a slipmat is the whole of the maintenance.
Does the platter underneath change the answer?
Yes, more than most comparisons admit.
- Stamped steel or aluminium. The ringing is real and audible, and damping is worth paying attention to. Either material helps; mass helps more.
- Heavy cast or machined platters. Much of the resonance was engineered out before the mat arrived. The mat is mostly there to slip and to protect.
- Acrylic. Acrylic has an impedance close to vinyl's, which is why some acrylic platters are designed to be played bare. A mat on one is a deliberate change of character rather than a fix.
Does thickness change with the material?
It has to. Rubber needs mass to do its job, so rubber mats tend to run thick. Felt does its work by density rather than depth, so a good felt mat is around 3 mm.
Thickness is not free. It raises the record, which tilts the cartridge in the groove, and a large change is worth a tonearm height check. The arithmetic is in does slipmat thickness matter.
So which should you use?
Four questions settle it.
- Do you ever hold a spinning record? Felt. There is no second option.
- Is your platter thin, light metal, and do you never touch the record? Rubber has a genuine case on damping.
- Is your room dry and your vinyl clinging to everything? Felt, and a humidifier before either.
- Do you want the least maintenance of any option? Rubber, and accept that cueing by hand is off the table.
We make one material. The 21 is 21oz felt, which is 712 g/m², at 3.18 mm and 298.5 mm across: dense enough to lie flat and shed very little, thin enough to leave your tonearm geometry roughly where you set it. The full platter mat specification has every figure.
Questions
- Is felt or rubber better for a turntable?
- Felt if you ever hold a record still by hand, because rubber will not let you. If you never touch a spinning record, rubber damps a thin metal platter slightly better and wipes clean, while felt sheds static more readily and is far thinner.
- Can you cue by hand on a rubber mat?
- No. Rubber grips the record and the record turns with the platter. Slip-cueing needs felt.
- Which mat holds less static, felt or rubber?
- Felt gives charge somewhere to go, because it is porous and holds a little ambient moisture. Rubber is an insulator, so charge that forms stays on the record. Neither prevents static; humidity above roughly 50% does more than either.
- Does a rubber mat sound better than felt?
- On a thin, light metal platter a heavy rubber mat damps more, and the difference can be audible. On a heavy cast platter there is far less for either to fix. The effect is real but smaller than most claims suggest.
- Is felt worse for dust?
- Felt holds dust in its surface where rubber does not, which is rubber's strongest argument. A lint roller over the mat takes about ten seconds and removes it.
- Does a thick rubber mat hurt a belt-drive turntable?
- It can. A thick rubber mat adds real mass to a platter whose motor and bearing were specified without it. Light belt-driven decks are the ones to be careful with.
- Should you use a mat on an acrylic platter?
- Acrylic has an impedance close to vinyl's, so some acrylic platters are designed to play records directly. A mat on one changes the character deliberately rather than correcting a fault.
- How thick should a felt mat be?
- Around 3 mm. Ours is 3.18 mm. Felt works by density rather than depth, so it does not need the thickness rubber does.
- What does 21oz felt mean?
- Areal density: 21 ounces per square yard, or 712 g/m². Most turntables ship with 16oz. The heavier felt lies flatter, pills less and holds less loose fibre.
- Do I need to adjust my tonearm if I change mat material?
- Only if the thickness changes much, because the mat sets the record's height. Going from a 3 mm felt to a thick rubber mat is worth a tonearm height check.
- Can I use both at once?
- Stacking mats raises the record, softens the slip and gains nothing. Use one.
- Which do you make?
- Felt only. 21oz, high compression, 3.18 mm, 298.5 mm across, printed by dye sublimation so there is nothing sitting on the surface.