yankfish, I must confess that when I went through the manual I was a bit concerned, no mat…what the hell… then I went on VPI’s forum to check everything I could on the mat topic and I decided to try…
Needless to say that the idea of placing a record on a bare aluminium surface and clamp it down was gross… but it worked, really there is no need to use a mat, i tried with a thin kevlar mat, the good old Sicomin but there was no point. It is conceived to be used without mat and it works beautifully like that. VPI has engineered an excellent turntable with the Prime, no need to tweak anything, a great sounding machine.
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you’re a braver man than I is all i can say
wonder why they don’t make the gasket at least the size of the label and a little thicker
but then again they are world class engineers and i can barely set the antiskating on my TT
Anti-skating…now there’s a debate!!!
the function of the grommet/gasket is to force the record to “bend” so to say and flatten against the platter. If it would be as large as the record’s label it would require too much pressure and would not bend that much, let alone the risk of damaging the record itself.
To say it differently the whole package, platter, grommet,record and clamp is a coupling system rather than a classic decoupling like the usual platter,mat,record…
And I assume that everything has been carefully calculated when it comes to vibration/resonances absorption/dissipation by mean of the chassis and the arm itself. But I am not an engineer and I have to stop here 
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To be fair, neither can VPI. 
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…as a matter of fact they do not like it that much… 
I think Rega’s attitude is that anti-skating needs to be set ‘only approximately’. Good…because this makes the setting of an appropriate value inordinately easier. I also think that us relative obsessives suffer from the fact that (in my experience, anyway) bias mechanisms seem to always have a residual force, even when set at zero. In my case, magnetic force diminishes by inverse square…it does not suddenly disappear when the plunger reaches zero. Spring mechanisms must be pre-loaded at zero on the dial, otherwise they might rattle or come loose!e
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I wonder when they “designed” it. My mk 2 Townshend, bought used around 1990 has a similar setup, except the disc is PTFE and the platter is slightly dished and faced a polymer.
nothing comes from nothing, as usual…
thanks for stopping, my brain is full
i’m still fascinated by the fact the platter spins at all
and a tiny needle barely moving on a piece of vinyl
can make my house shake and tear my soul from my body
joking aside, i kinda get what you’re saying and i understand why the grommet is the way it is
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Good that someone understands, because I don’t. If the grommet is underneath the record and the clamp pushes the record down, it seems that the record surface becomes non-horizontal and bends down in some kind of curve towards the outer edge? This is good how?
Hi, yes it bends…it’s what it is supposed to do 
maybe this pictures sequence clarifyes…
Uploading: IMG_20200724_173845095.jpg…
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As I imagined, I still don’t know why this is good 
Does the vertical axis of the arm compensate? I mean, the stylus is at an angle
I may understand the pictures are not exhaustive enough. There Is no compensation needed by the tonearm, the record goes completely flat on the platter. So to say, the clamp press and “spread” the record on the platter… If you have a warped record when you place It on the platter you can see and feel that the external rim does not adhere in some areas, this Is the case this clamp helps a lot. When you screw down the clamp on the spindle the record becomes flatter… I was as worried as you at the beginning but now I am fully convinced It Is a great idea 
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Oh, so he grommet thingy gets pushed flat (or close to it) below the label? That must be some pressure by the clamp. But I see what it’s trying to do. Would not be for me, handling-wise, so hope I never hear one play better than my P8
No…I was not able to explain…
never mind…
thanks for trying, I guess it’s really not for me, I’d probably break it. But intriguing, I’ll look it up on their site
that’s crazy looking
looks like there’s almost no gap at all when the clamp is down
Very useful if the record is dished, as most of mine seem to be. My current deck doesn’t clamp to force it flat and with those discs you do have the stylus at an angle that makes a nonsense of your carefully set azimuth, but then with a rega you get what you’re given in that regard as you are with VTA baring the odd shim.
[quote=“Suedkiez, post:35, topic:10049”]
Oh, so he grommet thingy gets pushed flat (or close to it) below the label? That must be some pressure by the clamp. [/quote]
Yes, the SOTA clamp does. You should give it a try.