A New Lease on Life
Technics SL-1200GR Turntable
PRICE $1,699
WAY BACK IN THE MAY 2010 issue of Sound & Vision, I compared three sub-$1,000 turntables, including one that I felt was a bit of a rebellious choice for the audiophile listener. Over its nearly 40 years of production, the Technics SL-1200 series had morphed from one of the top models in the company’s industry-leading range of audiophile direct-drive turntables into a deck that was aimed squarely at the club and DJ market. As the years passed and the remainder of the Technics high-end audio lineup gradually faded away, the brand became synonymous with just one product: the SL-1200 DJ turntable in its various guises. I didn’t know it at the time of that 2010 review, but within about six months, Technics’s parent company, Matsushita/panasonic, would announce the end of SL-1200 production and the death of the legendary brand with it.
Fast-forward about five years, when Technics made a triumphant return at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show with an all-new lineup of high-end electronics and speakers. The only head-scratcher was that there was no turntable to be found. Had Panasonic’s bean counters decided that there wasn’t a viable future for vinyl playback? Was there any truth to the rumor that making more than three million SL-1200S over the decades had irreparably worn out the tooling used to build them? After all, a Technics equipment lineup without a turntable makes about as much sense as an Italian restaurant without pasta. Something had to give, and SL-1200 fans around the world started a petition to let the company know just how they felt.
Luckily, the wait for vinyl fans wouldn’t be too long. At the IFA Show in the fall of 2015, Technics teased the crowd, presenting a mock-up of a turntable but with no tonearm and practically no information. Did this signal the imminent return of the professional SP-10 series that you could use with your own tonearm? Technics was tight-lipped, but at least it looked like they had heard the cries of their fans, and a turntable eventually would be taking its rightful place in the brand’s lineup.
It finally debuted in January 2016: the SL-1200GAE. This appeared to be a super deluxe version of the venerable SL-1200 series on steroids, restricted to just 1,200 (naturally) individually numbered units, and sporting a very un-sl1200-like $4,000 price tag. This limited-production special was followed quickly by the
SL-1200G, which was essentially the same thing as the GAE minus the numbering. To the casual observer, it may have looked like Technics was simply picking up where they had left off a few years earlier—but what was the deal with those $4,000 price tags? After all, the SL-1200 Mk2 had been just $699 when it was discontinued in 2011.
In truth, the SL-1200GAE (Grand Anniversary Edition) and SL-1200G were nothing like the SL-1200S of old under the skin. Just about every part had been completely redesigned from scratch; the new models were simply wearing the familiar trappings of the old SL-1200. Think of the new decks as being like the Porsche
911 of turntables. The latest model might look kind of like a 35-year-old one, but take it for a spin and you’ll discover that they really have very little in common.
The real mystery was, to whom were these turntables with high-end price tags and DJ features being marketed? When the SL-1200 cost under $700, many audiophiles were
willing to overlook the DJ trappings and appreciate its performance. But that’s a harder sell at almost six times the price. Still, I suppose the Technics marketing people knew what they were doing, because those limitededition, numbered GAE models sold out pretty quickly.
The SL-1200GR, also available in black as the SL-1210GR, is the third model to come along in the resurrected lineup, and it’s this one that should really be seen as the true successor to the SL-1200S of the past. When you compare its specifications with those of the other SL-1200 variants made over the last 39 years since the launch of the
Mk2, it is the GR that most closely resembles its forebears. An affordable successor certainly makes sense, but it’s not as if Technics was able to simply fire up the machinery and start making Mk2s again. As with the higher-end models in the series, GR takes little besides its looks from the original. In fact, there’s only one solitary part that’s carried over from the older SL-1200 series, and that’s the dust cover, with its distinctive dome over the tonearm pivot.
In 2010, I speculated that the Mk2’s remarkably low price could have been the result of Technics having amortized the cost of the tooling some time back during the Reagan administration. Unfortunately, that type of savings won’t apply to an all-new model, but the company has still managed to keep the price down to a fairly reasonable $1,699. Go back to the Porsche analogy and think of the SL-1200GR as being kind of like the turntable equivalent of a bog standard 911 Carrera—still an amazing machine, but less than half the price of the fancy GT3 version.
Setup
Unlike many more affordable turntables sold today, the SL1200GR doesn’t come with a pre-installed and -aligned phono cartridge. That makes sense because the deck is intended for buyers in both the audiophile and DJ worlds, who will want to use very different types of cartridges and styli. It does mean, however, that you (or your retailer) will have to install and align a cartridge and balance the tonearm. The good news: With its removable headshell and clearly calibrated arm adjustments, that job isn’t as difficult
as it might be.
The headshell utilizes the H4-bayonet, often referred to as “Sme-style,” mount used on most S-shaped tonearms since the 1970s when the SL-1200 first arrived. By removing the headshell from the arm, you’ll find that connecting the four wires to the cartridge pins becomes much less tricky. Also, Technics supplies a clip-on overhang gauge that lets you set the overhang and horizontal tracking angle with reasonable accuracy while the headshell sits in your hand. Once you’ve reattached the headshell to the arm, you need to balance the arm’s calibrated counterweight, set the tracking force and anti-skating, and adjust the vertical tracking angle using the height-adjustment ring, and you’ll be ready to go. One notable change from older SL-1200S is that the signal output now uses a pair of RCA jacks, allowing you to supply your own cable—or you can use the fairly generic but decent one that’s included with the turntable.
Technics supplied the review turntable with the excellent Ortofon 2M Black moving-magnet cartridge, and I also tried it with a Lyra Delos, which is a more upscale, low-output, moving-coil design. Because I still have the late-production SL-1200 Mk2 that I used for my 2010 review, I was able to make a direct comparison between this new upstart and its ancestor. What’s especially cool is that because the arm geometry hasn’t changed, I was able to swap the headshells and cartridges back and forth between the two turntables, making comparisons a snap.
With the two decks sitting side by side, it’s immediately clear that the fit and finish have been stepped up a few notches on the SL-1200GR. Everything has a smoother and noticeably more solid feel, with absolutely no play detectable in the tonearm bearings. The platter-andmotor combination is one area where Technics has made a lot of changes under the skin. Weighing in at 5.5 pounds, the new platter is about a third more massive than the old one, so the all-new coreless
motor was imbued with about a third more torque, resulting in a nearly identical startup time.
Performance
Long-term pitch stability is often cited as a strong suit of direct-drive turntables, and the Technics drive system has always been one of the best. There’s no hint of the proverbial “hunt and peck” speed wavering and cogging that belt-drive fans often accuse direct drives of committing. Even the sustained piano chords at the opening of Sviatoslav Richter’s 1959 recording of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 on Deutsche Grammophon were totally in tune and steady as a rock by my ear. Technics makes a big deal about their new coreless direct-drive motor design, and it seems to be the real deal. There was a time when audiophiles would eschew direct-drive systems as not being capable of truly high-end performance, but more recent designs like the Brinkmann Bardo and the Grand Prix Audio Monaco have proven otherwise to many, albeit at vastly higher price points. Technics, with their coreless system, can now hold their own.
Going for a complete change of pace, I put on my original pressing of Bruce Springsteen’s The Ghost of Tom Joad. I reveled in the open dynamics and vibrancy of Springsteen’s vocal performance and the rich tonal color and texture of his fingerstyle acoustic guitar. Switching over to the Lyra Delos cartridge stepped up the level of inner detail to deliver even more refinement. I usually go to great lengths to align my cartridges with extreme care, and if I had one nit to pick about the SL-1200GR, it’s that the headshell connector can be just a bit sloppy. When you insert the headshell into the mounting collar, you’ll find that there’s just a bit of play, which can affect the azimuth ever so slightly (that’s the left-to-right tilt of the cartridge when viewed from head on). Quick and easy cartridge swaps are important to the DJ, if not so much to the audiophile. So just for us, it would be nice to see a version of the arm without the inevitable compromises of the Sme-style headshell mounting collar.
As you might expect from the latest version of a turntable renowned for filling dance floors around the world, the SL-1200GR can deliver fast and powerful bass. The very slightly soft and rounded quality to bass notes that I noted in my 2010 review of the Mk2 appears to have been almost entirely eliminated in this new version, likely thanks to the use of a more massive platter with better damping qualities. Tony Levin’s amazing bass playing on Peter Gabriel’s duet with Kate Bush, “Don’t Give Up,” had a newfound sense of focus and solidity compared with the older table.
Conclusion
After living with the SL-1200GR for a while, I began to realize just how fuss-free and fun it was to play records on this turntable. The platter doesn’t wobble about on a bouncy suspension, and it can start and stop in an instant. The arm handles beautifully and the cueing lever drops the stylus exactly where you expect it to fall. And the motor has plenty of torque if you want to dust off your record with one of those carbon-fiber brushes. I found myself simply playing and enjoying the music on my records, without much of the analog ritual often needed with more exotic equipment.
The SL-1200GR represents the long-awaited return of the bestselling high-performance turntable in history. While I can’t really comment on its Dj-ing capabilities, I can say that it’s an excellent choice for the audiophile who wants a no-fuss solution that will likely last through a nuclear war. It really is a viable alternative to some of the popular audiophile offerings in this price range. I expect that if Technics left off a bunch of the DJ tchotchkes—such as the pitch slider, target light, and strobe platter—they’d actually sell a bunch more turntables to people who may otherwise dismiss this one as “just another DJ deck.”
Until then, we’ll keep it away from the audio snobs as our own little secret.