Technics SL1200 - a short review

Technics SL1200

It seems that at the moment direct drive TT’s are not the pariah they used to be during the eighties and nineties when belt drives decks and cottage industry manufacturers were seen as the savoir of all things audio.

It's not just Alcohol and Drugs you will find at nigh clubs:

Thanks to the efforts of the DJ and night club industry the Technics SL1200 direct drive deck never really went away and so Technics were always able to keep the SL1200 production line in a profitable state. As a result Audiophiles are now rediscovering the potential of a properly engineered direct drive mechanism. Yes, I will agree that the direct drive players most of us are familiar with were the cheap plastic units. Most of these had very light and highly microphonic plinths, light weight platters and very crude direct drive motors with poor bearing geometry, low cost electronics with a motor that cogged or pulsed quite audibly. These devices had every right to be abandoned on the scrap heap of HiFi history.

Not all decks are created equal though and the Technics / Matsushita R&D resources were vast. With all these means available to them these guys were able to spend large amounts of capitol and man power into developing a direct drive system that could work, and it worked very well. Most of this direct drive technology was aimed at the SP series or “special projects” arm of the Technics brand line. Much of this technology was also licensed to and financed by other manufactures as well, manufactures such as Denon, JVC, or Sony. Have a look inside a JVC or Denon direct drive and see how many of the control circuit IC’s carry a logo form one of the Matsushita group companies (Panasonic, National and Technics being the most notable). The SL1200 direct drive turntable was a direct beneficiary of the SP research.

The DJ’s liked the SL1200 Turntable because it was solidly built with a cast aluminium plinth that was damped with a composite rubber inner block and a sturdy composite polymer base. It was rugged, reliable, it could take the rough treatment of being lugged about to different venues and there was no unreliable belt drive mechanism that required maintenance. The only documented service requirement was a few drops of oil on the main spindle bearing every 2000 hours. Many owners were blissfully unaware of this requirement but the deck still proceeded to function regardless.

The HiFi press has only recently re-discovered the SL1200 Mk. II Turntable which has remained almost unchanged since about 1978 and still remains in production today, this means that the all the manufacturing plant and equipment has well and truly been paid for and the deck can be offered for a very competitive price . Added to this equation is the large quantity of units shipped every year which means that the cost per unit becomes very low when you consider the technology and material value of each deck. How low?, well about 800 dollars Aus, 350 pounds UK or 550 dollars US will buy you a brand new SL1200 MkII. (NB: the SL1200 MK V version of this deck offers extra facilities that would benefit the DJ type users but offers no improvement to Audio performance, both units are manufactured side by side with the same common parts inside.)

Now I want a piece of the action:

Well:- After reading all the press and being in need of a zero fuss, zero maintenance deck for use in the study with my computer for vinyl to CD / IPod transfer I decided the SL1200 Mk II was at least good enough for that sort of work. Here we have a deck that should function consistently regardless of the surface it is sitting on, won’t go out of adjustment or out of “tune” after being moved around, can sit in storage for a couple of months and then be pulled out, plonked down, plugged in and then expected to work with no fuss. I needed a work horse and not a high end temperamental Diva. The Technics deck seemed to fulfil all of these requirements and given the good press the deck has started to attract I felt the need to at least give it a try. So I high tailed it down to my local DJ supplies and ordered an SL1200. Actually after waiting 3 weeks for my order to arrive I was told that the SL1200 was on back order for at least another month and even then delivery could not be guaranteed apparently the SL1200 Mk II is more popular than I expected. I was talked into getting an SL1210 which is an SL1200 finished in black rather than silver-grey, after seeing the SL1210 in the flesh I should have just ordered this in the first place as it actually looks nicer than the silver-grey of the SL1200, but more about the styling later.

After getting the Deck home and unpacked I was initially impressed with the weight of the unit, at just over 12 Kg’s this is no light weight deck. The plinth has a reassuringly dead thud when tapped and is a very inert structure. The rubber and compression spring feet along with the heavy plinth will go to providing a substantial amount of environmental isolation and immunity to the effects of the surface on which the deck sits. The platter is aluminium but it also has a rubberised liner bonded to the underside to dampen out any ringing and to provide added mass. The platter matt that is provided with the deck is also quite substantial and goes to adding more mass and damping to the platter. All up the platter and mat weigh in at 2Kg and with the matt installed the platter has a very dead sound and is reassuringly well damped.

The SL1200’s tone arm often comes in for criticism and I am just as guilty on this one having personally accused the arm of letting the SL1200 package down, prejudices will always proliferate in the audio industry. Nevertheless, having seen and handled the arm in the flesh, I wish to retract any criticism. Within the price category it is actually quite well engineered. The bearings have no perceivable play yet move quite freely. The gimbals are made from cast aluminium and are of a substantial quality. The arm tube is also of a substantial build quality and the supplied head shell is a cast alloy unit that is quite rigid yet also low mass. However the biggest plus on the whole Technics arm is the VTA or height adjusting ring. The graduated threaded ring used to adjust the height is just so easy and intuitive to operate. The graduations around the outer ring also make it a walk in the park to have a repeatable and consistent setting for all you compulsive cartridge swappers. I am now seriously reconsidering my initial decision to fit a Rega Arm as an upgrade to the deck.

Is the SL1200 the ultimate turntable and the last word in vinyl replay? Well having just praised the deck I will criticise some areas of its build. The platter on my unit does run a little out in the vertical plane (squarness to the spindle centre axis) by about 0.5mm at the platters outer edge. When I fist assembled the platter onto the spindle taper I was less than careful when cleaning the mating faces, any dust or dirt in this area will cause the platter to run out of square. I reassembled the platter several times cleaning and blowing away any dust with compressed air, but the best I could get the run out is about 0.5mm. Nonetheless, 0.5 mm shouldn’t make any perceivable difference to the pitch stability. The concentricity of the platter however was dead on with no visible eccentricity. So be careful and be clean when assembling the platter to the spindle. This is one area I like about my Linn, the spindle and inner platter are press fitted together at the factory, they are machined true and square, they will then stay that way for the life of the part.

An operational issue I have with the SL1200 is the arm’s cuing lever. Its function is very direct and not very well damped. If you lower the cue lever, the stylus drops onto the LP with a direct and sudden action; there is no slow and progressive damped lowering action. I have noted this aspect mainly because I am used to the much more progressive, controlled and gentle action of my Ittok and the Rega RB250 I owned before that. It’s not really a criticism but more of an observation about its operation. The “lift off” action of the cue lever is quite OK and I felt safe to use at any time.

The other criticism I would make is about the Cue lever and the cueing arm rest, the lever must be lowered before the arm rest’s clamp can be used to lock the arm down in its rest position. As a safe working practise I always leave my arm with the cue lever / arm lifter in the UP position and the arm rest locked around the arm when not in use. The last thing you need to do to an expensive moving coil cartridge is to have the arm floating around in any direction and exposing a delicate cantilever and stylus to random knocks and bumps.

As a parting shot about the styling, what is with the bubble on the dust cover over the arm gimbal area? It looks silly and it also looks like some one in the Technics design office forgot to do the packaging study for the deck to lid clearance envelope. It’s not really problem as such, but more of a styling issue that just looks a bit naff. Also from a styling perspective the BIG FOOT – MOON BOOT feet on the deck do make it look like a tragic seventies left over, but now I am being superficial and a little pernickety. When viewed from most angles the deck actually dates quite well styling wise. If you really must have your wood grain plinths then go to http://www.kabusa.com/m1200.htm#WOOD and have a look at his “Harwood” cases. These are neat little skirts that will improve the WAF of any Technics deck that shares the SL1200 foot print.

Well how does it sound?

I avoided choosing a cartridge until after I was familiar with the deck so I fitted my trusty AT95E into the head shell. I wanted to find out what the deck was capable of and see what underlying characteristics were at play before deciding on an appropriate price bracket for the cartridge and what style of cartridge I would need in order to balance out any underlying vices and to complement any virtues of the SL1200. The AT95E although a budget cartridge can sound exceptionally good considering its price bracket and when fitted to a high quality arm it can punch well above its weight. I have seen people shake their heads in disbelief when that hear the AT95E bolted into the business end of a SME V, don’t laugh I have heard it. The AT95E is a known benchmark and this makes it a good reference point for the purpose of this evaluation.

The Good:

The first thing that hits with this deck is the surety and stability of the pitch as well as the solidity and depth of the bass. Slowly decaying Piano notes sound pitch perfect and solid if you have an issue with pitch instability with this deck, I’m sorry the problems in the master tape and not the playback equipment. The Chesky recording of the Earl Wild doing the Rachmaninoff 2nd piano concerto is one example I would use. The decaying piano notes on the opening chords were solid and pitch true to the last decaying moments. This is one area many belt drive decks don’t always get right (My own Linn included), particularly the suspended sub chassis type that comes from the Thorens / Linn design. The Technics was also able to portray a deep and powerful delivery on the double bass lines form the same Earl Wild Rachmaninoff recording with a richness and weight to the double basses that is very rarely heard outside of a live event. The sound stage was a little smaller scale that what I am used to from My LP12 / Ittok combo but it is well focused and all the instruments were placed precisely where they should be with a both left to right position and front to back spatial detail. Some thing my Bi-amped ELAC 207.2 will give you if it the source component can dig it out, the SL1200 was only too happy to oblige.

The other thing the Technics was able to do better than anything else I have experienced is a blackness and silence to the noise floor of every recording I played. Despite its meagre dimension the main spindle bearing on the SL1200 is very quiet. This coupled with the direct drive motor means that whole noise floor of the deck is very quiet. Motor noise break through is never going to happen on this deck. One of the issues with a typical belt drive or idler is the action of the drive mechanism pulling or biasing the bearing off centre. On the Technics the platter spindle is the motor spindle and the large coils in the drive mechanism will work to centralize the platters spindle bearing.

Playing some John Lee Hooker “The Healer” I was reminded of how well the SL1200 can dig down into the bottom octaves of a recording. The bass lines were deep and solid but at the same time they seemed to do the “PRAT” thing as well. They were tuneful, dynamic and solid at the same time. In The Bonnie Raitt / Lee Hooker duet track you could easily place each singer and you could pick out the acoustic of the studio easily. John Lee’s habitual foot tapping was easily picked out and again the Technics was picking out the spatial detail easily, each instrumentalist was given his own space in the image between the speakers.

Playing some Jazz LP’s I reached for the Oscar Peterson “We get requests” (yes I know its clichéd but it’s a great album and I like it ... so there) I played the first track on side two “You Look Good to me”. Here the opening section starts with Ray brown doing a bowed double bass solo, the Technics pulled out all the richness of the harmonics with all the solidity and weight in the bottom octaves. You also get to hear Ray quietly scatting singing to himself once he puts down the bow and starts with the pizzicato jazz style. The Technics Deck also confirmed to my ears that the original master tapes had a minor pitch irregularity that I attributed to my Linn LP12 and the Rega I owned before I owned before that.

The Bad:

Ok, so it not all peaches and cream or sugar and spice with the Technics deck, it has some issues as well. I must preface the criticisms by saying they are minor and pretty subjective in nature but I felt they were worth pointing out in the context of this article

If one had to describe the main overall sound of the deck it would be muted or a slightly dark and shut in. It was a presentation that seemed to focus on the fundamentals of the music but somehow glossed over the finer mordents or the smaller intricacies of the details that go to make up the musical events. The top end aspects that I was used to on several of the recordings was not presented as I was used to hearing it with my LP12 - Ittok combo. Yes the detail was there and I could hear those subtle musical details but I had to listen for them.

When placing instruments between the speakers the Technics was very accurate in inserting the players around the sound stage but the SL1200 was unable to move beyond the space in-between the speakers and give you that big walk around sound stage that you can get with the more expensive players.

To summarize I would call the Technics sound a slightly darker and very matter of fact reading of the disc whose major strengths are accuracy and precision with an almost Teutonic or bureaucratic appraisal of the LP it was asked to examine rather than play. The deck has some awesome possibilities when it comes to the reproduction of subterranean bass and it also has a sense of weight and gravitas that is normally associated with the high end idler drives and the big Uber heavy platter super decks. The SL1200 is also rock steady when it comes to pitch stability as well as an exceptionally quiet noise floor.

I believe a good portion of the decks character can be attributed to the heavy mass loading and damping of the plinth as well as the heavily damped platter since it has a significant rubber layer bonded to the underside of the platter as well a substantially heavy rubber mat on the top of the platter and you cant damp it any more than that. I have heard others refer to it as an almost CD like sound without the hard musical edge that can sometimes plague the Silver disc. It’s by no means bad, it just a matter of fact... The good news for me is that I think these minor negative observations can be balanced out by the appropriate choice of cartridge.

The Ugly;

Well now that I good Idea of the decks capabilities I now have to choose a better cartridge for the little Technics. I needed a cartridge that would do it justice but at the same time would reflect an appropriate cost in the context of the whole package. To slap a 5 grand Koetsu on an 850 Dollar Aus deck in my mind seems a bit absurd. Upon reflection and looking at other typical LP Playback examples I estimated the cost of the Cartridge should not exceeded one third of the total package. I wanted a moving Magnet as I didn’t relish the prospect of having to remove and re-tip the cartridge at regular intervals. I also needed a cartridge that was on the bright side of neutral to counter the decks darker character but at the same time I’m looking for neutrality to complement the SL1200’s “tell it like it is” nature. In the end there was only one choice.

The new Ortofon “2M” series are getting good reviews in all the press. The measured data would suggest that they have a flat response with a slight HF rise, they measure quite well and their principal characteristics would suggest that they would make a good match for the Technics Arm. The most expensive of the four “2M” series, the Bronze and the Black also get a more advance coil design using silver plated copper in their coils and a revised pole piece to reduce the internal impedance which will help to extend their high frequency response. The Bronze and the Black also get a fine line type stylus which means better high frequency tracking, lower HF distortion and a better frequency response when the cartridge is trying to navigate the tighter and more physically compressed inner grooves. At 649 Dollars Aus. the Black with its Nude Shibata stylus is over budget in context of an 800 dollar turntable but at 374 Dollars Aus. Bronze with its nude fine line stylus comes in a little over budget, but it’s an acceptable compromise so …. The Ortofon 2M Bronze it is.

Stay tuned for Part Two of the review … I’m off to get the Ortofon 2M Bronze.

Go to Part Two

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