Do you remember what they used on the Gen 1 table then? A rubber mat? This one came with a felt one but I fitted it with a rubber and cork one I had available.
Depends what you call Gen 1.
IIRC the original mat was acrylic.
Definitely not rubber, for sure.
That's not correct - some time pre 1984 the original Sota came with a lossy blue mat - with the sponginess and feel of wet rubber.
The acrylic mat came somewhere around 1984, I remember the first supermat system ( for non vacuum Sotas ) which consisted of a revised acrylic mat (slightly translucid) with a rubber underlay introduced in 1985.
I was a distributor for Sota at the time.
The acrylic mat has since been through many revisions from the mid 80's.