Origins of Felt Slipmats, The History of DJ Slipmats
The first slipmats for turntables were marketed and popularized in the context of discotheques, mainly in the United States in the late 1970s.
They were introduced as a replacement for the standard rubber mats that rested on the central platter of turntables. Unlike rubber, felt mats allowed DJs to control and manipulate records much more easily, especially for mixing but above all for scratching.
The revolutionary Scratch technique was unintentionally created in 1975 by Theodore Livingston, better known as “ Grand Wizard Theodore ”.
While playing records in his room at high volume, his mother, furious at the noise, burst into the room to ask him to turn down the sound. Theodore then paused the record by holding it with one hand. Holding the record still, he accidentally moved it back and forth and then realized the sound this effect produced, its possibilities. What he doesn't know yet is that he has just created a musical movement that remains a major art form today.
Recognized as the inventor of the Scratch, he gained credibility and popularity through his mastery of the Needle Drop and other techniques he invented and perfected.
It was a little later in the Hip-Hop DJ community of the Bronx in New York that the first slipmats were used in a more creative and spectacular way.
Pioneers of the genre, such as Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler), popularized the use of these accessories for their performances and mixing techniques, as they allowed the vinyl record to be spun and slid by manipulating it on the central platter of the running turntable. This gave rise to new techniques such as Backspinning .
In the early 2000s, a company born in a Chicago garage would radically propel the return of slipmats.
One of the major ideas was to allow total control of the mix or scratch by materializing the back of the slipmats (0.8mm and 2mm thick) with a thin smooth and glazed film that allows optimal gliding on the central platter. An innovation now patented and globally recognized.
Since then, these professional slipmats have become THE REFERENCE in the world of DJing and are very popular with audiophiles (3mm thick).
They come in 3 distinct thicknesses: 0.8mm, 2.0mm and 3.0mm which are truly important for their use.
