Record mats, VTA, clamps and my ears

My experiene is that you want the record anchored, fully supported and as flat as possible. As such, your ears are telling you the truth and you are striding down the "most correct" path for vinyl reproduction.

Mats that offer limited support, such as the ringmat, tend to reduce the solidity of image, minimize bass impact and over-all warmth, increase ringing, suffer from increased artificial high frequency artifacts, etc... They are just plain "junk" in my book. Some take the increase in ringing / high frequency artifacts as an increase in detail and liveliness and think that it is a good thing. This is usually the case when they have an overly warm or "dead" vinyl rig or an arm / table / cartridge combo that is not optimized.

Obviously, this is strictly my point of view and it is worth every penny that you paid for it. Let the fireworks begin : ) Sean
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Not familar with your deck, but both the mat material/construction and it's thickness (due to changing VTA) will alter the sound.

I do not consider myself to be a cheapskate (a potlicker yes, but never a cheapskate), and coming from this standpoint you still have a couple of DIY mats to experiement with.

Try one mat made from "wool" felt (fabric stores sell 12" squares for $1-$2). Also, try one made from cork (thin sheets are available @ Home and Art stores. If the cork is in a roll it will need to be pressed flat for a few weeks before you cut the mat from it.

Depending on the overall thickness you could also try combining the two materials (flip the mat over to see which side sounds best up).

In general (in regard to VTA) the thicker the mat the fuller the sound and the thinner the mat the lighter/brighter the sound. When the tail end of a cartridge is lowered it will produce more bass and when the tail end is raised this will accent the HF's. The trick is to achieve a proper balance between the two and I have rarely been completely satisfied with a cartridge that has been set to the manufacturer's VTA specs (a little trial and error adjustment always seems to help).

Never owned a TT without VTA adjustment, but I just leave mine as is and use a thinner felt mat for thicker LP's (takes a few seconds to swap mats).

Not knowing what your cartridge's specified VTA is, or what VTAs you might actually be running with the three mats in question, I'm going to punt on the angle issue. I will venture to say, however, that unless the stylus is a fairly radical line-contact, spade-shaped configuration, I'd guess that the mat differences are responsible for most of the audible changes, as long as the set-up got the VTA essentially correct to begin with.

It's not surprising that you would hear the largest degree of improvement from using the clamp with the least good-sounding of the mats; that is the one that will need help the most. The better mats will get you more of the way there without the aid of a clamp, while still benefitting from its use.

I'm not familiar with your particular model of clamp, but if it's typical, with a diameter that's just a little smaller than the record's label, and a clamping surface profile that is lowest around the perimeter and higher towards the center spindle, then you may need to shim up the mat surface center about the spindle, with a compressible washer placed over the spindle, under the record. Effectively raising the central mat surface slightly above the level that's underneath the record's grooved portion, creates a small downward dishing of the record when the clamp is applied, which ensures near-complete contact of the record with the mat in the area between the lead-in and lead-out grooves. The washer should not be larger than about 3/4" in diameter and about 1/8" thick, and is commonly made of felt, although sorbothane or cork can work too.

However, if the mat surface is not entirely flat, but rather is contoured to be depressed in the area under the record label, then you may have to add another, non-compressible washer, made of plastic, hard rubber, cardboard, or metal, below the soft one, with the right thickness to just compensate for the mat's center depression and bring the bottom surface of the upper compressible washer to the same height as the main mat surface. You'll have to push down on the clamp before tightening in order to get the desired downward dish of the record, but be careful about trying this with certain older vintage records made from styrene or shellac, which will not flex like modern vinyl, and can break. Taking these measures should prevent the clamp from pushing the record's label into the soft mat and raising up around the edge, thereby achieving proper coupling of the record to the mat and platter.