SL1200 upgrade tonearm or replace cartridge?

Zenblaster: I agree with you. I've read enough testimonials of good tonearm swaps to agree with you that at some point you're throwing good money after bad on the SL12x0 stock tonearm. Technics must have realized this too, as they originally also offered the SL120 with an armboard drilled for a SME 3009.

In my case I added the KAB trough because I had just bought the turntable and had $150 to damp the supplied tonearm, but not $700-2000 to replace it. After that, I have less than a nickel's worth of pipe thread tape and a reasonably priced aftermarket headshell. After that the tweaks are things the Technics would need anyway for vibration and resonance control, and they don't add up to a lot of money.

At this point the only thing left is to upgrade the tonearm to get that more holographic soundstage and deeper inner detail. When the time comes I'll probably get an SME arm board from Sound Hi-Fi of England and search for a reasonably priced (?) used SME 309 like Jeff Dorgay (of Tone Audio) did.

Nick_sr: I think the improvement realized with the tonearm wrap is system-dependent. I have an Audio Technical AT150MLX which has a reputation for being forward and bright. Wrapping the tonearm quelled that bright spot. I suspect with a mellower signal chain or a cartridge with a kinder upper midrange, the tonearm wrap wouldn't do as much. You *do* have to also wrap the knurled collar that attaches the headshell to the arm to get the full benefit. That collar rings at least as much as the rest of the tonearm as a very resonant ping.

Vegasears: thanks for the links I had already seen the sound-hifi one, but the art of sound forum had some interesting threads. My favourite was a link to AudioAsylum that pictures of re-plinthed sl-12000 with two arms.

See link: http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=vinyl&n=816478&highlight=technics+plinth+powermatic&r=

Johnny: You could be right about the system dependence, my phono stages is AR-SP16. I have wrapped the collar ring as it always seemed to me the most questionable point in the arm.

Johnnyb, thanks for your information regarding the effects of the servo circuit used on the SL1200s and pardon my layman's knowledge of this subject.

I still find it questionable though.

As I understand it a servo circuit reads some method of feedback so many times a second and when there is fluctuation error the circuit makes a correction.

The process of the error, the sensing of the error, and the correction of the error, however quickly its done simply must create some stepping. Almost digital in nature.

Consider, back in the day when these circuits were first developed the reading rate was, say, 100 times second. Today that technology can read thousands of times a second.

I'm not sure how one would measure this but obviously the Panasonic engineers had a method which led them to change and/or improve this function on the SP decks. Using outboard processing and power supply to drive the far more robust SP motor they made two more versions of these functions in the SP controllers. Did any of these updates make it to the drive of the SLs?

That said, I would be skeptical of claims made by anybody marketing products for the SL.

On the broader picture of the SL1200 my experiences are like Zenblaster's. It didn't take a great deal of money to find a deck that takes LP playback to another level altogether. I learned this lesson the hard way with poor speaker choices and expecting better electronics to remedy a fundamental shortcomings of the speakers.

Still, when I brought my brand new SL home, punched that start button for the first time and that platter came up to speed so damn fast, that turntable endeared itself to me and I will not sell it.

After reading your tweaks I think I'm going to give them a shot. Thank you very much.

02-14-13: Vicdamone
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After reading your tweaks I think I'm going to give them a shot. Thank you very much.

Here is a picture of my SL1210 M5G and the tweaks I've made.

o The tonearm has the KAB fluid damper and is wrapped in Teflon pipe thread tape
o The headshell is an LPGear ZuPreme.
o The platter has an Oracle Groove Isolator sorbothane mat. I'm sure any good damping mat would work.
o The standard feet have been replaced with a Dayton speaker spike set. Available in various finishes, the black chrome is a great match with the Technics. At $29.95 they're a stone cold bargain for a set of four solid brass cones. The supplied threads are an exact fit for the threaded sleeves on the underside of the Technics. I unscrewed and removed the cones' adjustable tips to truncate the cones and create a concave bottom.
o The concave bottoms fit perfectly on the steel balls of the Vibrapod Cones, which then rest atop Vibrapod #2 Isolators. if you want to simplify, just unscrew the stock Technics feet and rest the threaded sleeves on the balls of the Vibrapod cones. This alone has a significant effect on lowering the noise floor and adding inner detail.
o I sit this whole mess on top of a 3-1/2" thick maple butcher block cutting board. I used to use an inexpensive 1-1/2" thick cutting board from Ikea. Moving up to this massive board ($100 or less from overstock.com) made a quite noticeable difference which my wife described immediately after the change.
Under the cutting board is a pair of computer keyboard wrist pads made of silicon gel.

Yes, it's a bit convoluted, but it actually looks pretty nice and the whole stack of cones, pads, and cutting board total about $200, less than a typical retail vibration isolation platform and more versatile. This enables me to take advantage of the Technics' outstanding torque and speed accuracy while minimizing its weaknesses in vibration control and isolation.

Johnny- Great looking table.

Nothing left to do but add the SME tonearm.