Ok, what am I missing? When I hear Technics turntables, I think Craigslist and DJ tables. What am I missing?
I’ll tell you what you’re *not* missing--too much Kool-Aid--Kool-Aid from high end audio snobs, Kool-Aid from belt-drive snobs and from their chief missionary and evangelist, Ivor Tiefenbrun, who traveled the world demonstrating his rigged A/B tests between SL1200s and his Linn belt-drive turntables. His efforts caught on among cottage industry high-end loyalists and a new dogma was born.
It appears to me that he saw the direct drive designs as a threat to the UK-based turntable cottage industry, which only needed an over-the-counter AC motor, a rubber band, a machined platter and a plinth. Oh, and a tonearm from somebody.
There was only one way to do direct drive and that was with a lot of capital and high precision manufacturing resources.
When the SL1200 came out, it was marketed and perceived as an affordable high end turntable, with nearly the torque of an idler-drive turntable but much lower noise. The SL1200 retailed at $350 in 1975, which translates to $1800 in 2018 money.
The adjustable pitch control was on the original models, and *not* for dance clubs, which barely existed at the time. It was a high end feature for audiophile musicians who wanted to play back LPs at the correct pitch (such as Side One of Miles Davis’s "Kind of Blue") and play fixed pitch instruments such as piano, vibraphone, and marimba along with recordings of mistuned instruments. You can’t tune a vibraphone or marimba to match pitches with mistuned instruments, and it takes half a day to do it with a piano--assuming you have the training and skill to do it.
Well, lo and behold, it turned out that the SL1200 had some desirable features for DJ-ing: It had high torque like the idler drives they had been using, which translates into a more consitent relentless beat for dance music; it spins up for the next song almost as fast as idler drive, it has a much lower noise floor than idler drive turntables (I swear, I could hear idler-sourced turntable rumble on FM broadcasts). And it has a strong, propulsive bass which makes it easier to dance to the music. This was a happy accident, not a targeted marketing plan, at least until the MkII.
Once the dance club market adopted the SL1200, Technics designed the MkII with some features attractive to the dance market, such as big sliders (instead of tiny knobs) for beat and pitch matching. The direct drive with free-floating platter already had an advantage over idler drive for scratching. You can’t scratch idler drive when the idler is engaged and you can’t scratch belt drive at all. Nor is belt drive propulsive enough for dancing.
So just because the Technics was *adopted* by the dance club industry does not mean it was worthless for its original purpose.
And just because it became popular doesn’t mean it was flimsy and cheaply built. Quite the contrary. If you see them show up on Craigslist, it’s because they’ve been played and abused to near death, and yet are still functional with some parts and maintenance. The owners sell their old ones at shockingly durable after-market prices and replace them with new ones.
