Funk APM - Advanced Platter Mat

Funk APM - Advanced Platter Mat

7 mm APM (Advanced Platter Mat) by Funk combines the energy-absorbing micro-bubble technology of the Achromat with glass for enhanced performance. In the groove, the stylus accelerates at more than 20,000G - pile-driving vibrations into the disc.

At the vinyl-to-mat boundary, these vibrations reflect back to the stylus and are read as colouration. As the mat is the only component the disc sits on, it’s the only tool we have available to absorb this energy before it causes harm.

Bonding Achromat to a glass sub-plate with a visco-elastic compound creates APM. The benefit this has on your music outperforms Achromat.

One customer wanted to try this for himself and bought both. Having compared them, he very kindly sent us his findings:

"The new APM arrived a few days ago and, my goodness, it is a tremendous improvement. I'm honestly shocked by how much of a difference it's made. I always thought the achromat made percussion sound incredible on my system, but now also vocals (and acoustic strings) sound so crisp and true, like I got new ls3/5as speakers or something. I'm just in heaven. It took a little fiddling with the VTA to find the sweet spot, which is why I am writing days later, but this is the best purchase I've made in years. And it looks handsome as hell.”

APM goes further. The glass does two things: In addition to providing a grounding base to the mat, it also damps thin, flimsy, platters. These ring horribly. For 60 years manufacturers have been supplying them with a rubber mat in the hopes of stopping the ringing. Think of the rubber mat as a damped spring controlling the platter. It sort of works, but what it does NOT do is control the record, which is the far more important problem.
You hear a strange performance from your deck and you rad magazines and listen to dealers who convince you how good a dead platter is, (1200G and the like). You tap them and, yes, they’re dead, but they’ll set you back a lot of money, 1200G is 4,000.
Now fit APM to virtually any poor deck, and amazingly, when you repeat the same knuckle rap test, now even the cheapest platters are just about as dead!
Not only is it now dead, it takes the lead because it has Achromat, all for about 200.

APM is so good, if you have a deck with a “low-cost” platter, on Rega P1 or Project Debut, replacing them with APM you’ll have upgraded your entire deck in one simple, easy step.

Finally, APM is a default mat for turntables costing 20,000. This makes it an investment not a throw-away purchase.

So, APM is now perfect for 1200G, which has a flat platter. APM's glass has been built to work with both flat and also lipped platters - one size fits all.

These are lot more common sense to be found from the series of videos we’ve started to create, from “How good really is spending 500,000 on a deck?”, to “How to extend the life of your stylus? - fit Houdini.

Key Features

• Combines Achromat micro-bubble technology with glass for enhanced energy absorption
• The only component in contact with the disc - absorbs energy before it can colour the signal
• Reduces colouration caused by vibrations reflecting at the vinyl-to-mat boundary
• Step up from the standard Achromat with even greater performance