It's to do with the height, or lack of it on the Techies' platters. With modern headshells, even the SL1500 arm is set too high when using the supplied mat. With a Herbies PLUS the oracle mat, it's spot on and sounds quite ok to me The older SL120mk1 was fine as the plinth was slightly deeper I recall and I have a suspicion that the chamfer on the platter itself may have been a little steeper as well, but it's a long time since I saw, let alone used one...