Who Has the New Top Technics SL1200GRE? Does it blow your other expensive tables away?

@upstateaudio.........

they certainly are nice people and the store has some excellent equipment lines.  It was 7 hours round trip for my wife and I but so worth the trip.  

@ stereo5, I am lucky that I am only 1 hour away.

We were treated very well, the owner and salesman thanked us over and over and gave us some excellent recommendations on where to have lunch.  As we were leaving, the owner and salesman plus the bookkeeper and another associate all came outside to thank us again and wish us a safe trip home.  Audio Classics in Vestal, NY is the only other store I will deal with.  They treat you just as well as Adirondack Audio, and it is worth my time to travel there.

I sold mine pretty damn quick. Very inferior to my Linn LP12 + similar arm and cartridge

Tatyana's emphatic preference could be the old debate of Direct vs Belt Drive. I was using a Linn/Valhalla/Ittok/VDH when I got my first good DD, a Micro Seiki. For me it was no contest, I sold the Linn "pretty damn quick". (Both had an Ittok arm and the same cartridge, so the comparison was valid.)

Tatyana hasn't replied since that brief "very inferior" comment, but many who prefer BD say it's "more expressive"; DD is more "clinical". BD is more "expressive" but it's distortion: the rubber belt adds "rubato": very subtle pitch variations used by musicians to increase expressiveness. But the penalty is pitch variation where it isn't wanted, eg "wobble" on sustained notes such as piano, organ, etc, which drives some people nuts.

I don't want to reignite the debate, just pointing out a difference, which for many is decisive — a difference due to the different technologies, not the quality of the turntables.

@bima the happy medium is idler drive