Turntable Reviews

First, I replaced the thick rubber mat. Of the aftermarket mats I had on hand, the most fortuitous pairing turned out to be the admittedly odd-looking Trans-Fi Reso-Mat, which has tiny cones with rounded ends distributed across the record surface (£30 plus shipping). I'm always surprised by the vast sonic difference turntable mats can impart, but since resonance is essentially what a cartridge measures, I suppose I shouldn't be. This swap was particularly eye-opening: With the Reso-Mat in place, the Technics produced a far larger soundfield, with obviously greater resolution and instrument separation and less apparent noise. This substitution produced the largest sonic improvement, though not the largest musical one.

Replacing the stock headshell (footnote 1) with either the gunmetal-gray duralumin HE-001 from DS Audio or the Schick graphite headshell, both of which are heavier than the stock unit, improved tracking with the Dynavector and other low-compliance moving coil cartridges and lent the music more solidity and color.

For kicks, I substituted the stock power cord with the aforementioned AudioQuest Thunder, not expecting to hear much difference. Though I'm not sure why, I did hear a difference, and it was consistent with the improvements I hear these fat, braided cords impart to amplifiers and digital source components. The Technics sounded richer and quieter, with a more solid and prominent bass response. The difference wasn't vast but was nonetheless easily audible and consistent. If this paragraph is making you mutter "confirmation bias" while angrily adjusting the BICs in the pocket of your poly-blend shirt, you go right ahead.

Next, I shone an LED flashlight through a hole in the platter to locate the torque control. After setting the switch from automatic to manual, I reduced the torque by about a third of a revolution. The resulting change floored me. The turntable sounded mostly the same, but its somewhat mechanical, uptight character was nearly gone; now the music flowed and shimmied more convincingly. I also heard improved sustain and decay. Taking RPM Pro for another spin revealed a slightly inferior set of measurements. I suppose the utility of this control depends on whether you believe a turntable's job is to make recorded music meaningful and exciting or to exhibit near-perfect technical performance. For me, this adjustment proved essential and made listening to the SL-1200G considerably more enjoyable and engaging.

Listening
With these relatively simple adjustments made, I sat back to appreciate what the Technics was capable of. In addition to the Te Kaitora Rua, I used the Ortofon Cadenza Bronze, Ortofon SPU Classic G, and Hana Umami Red cartridges.

A track that helps me to figure out how a component handles rhythm is "Samba de Orly" from Chico Buarque's Construção (Philips 6349017), a landmark Brazilian pop record composed in 1971, while Buarque was in exile from Brazil, which was in the throes of a right-wing military dictatorship. The tension between the brightness of samba and the melancholy yearning of the lyric—Orly is the Paris airport where planes from Rio touched down, loaded in those days with Brazilians fleeing the regime—gives the song its emotional charge. The interplay of the rhythm guitar, bass, cuica, and percussion at the track's beginning can sound chaotic and disjointed on some systems. The Technics sorted the passage better than just about any source I've heard, playing it with uncommon coherence, order, and drive. My idler-drive Garrard excels at drive, but the SL-1200G was better yet, (re)creating the unflappable, locked-in grooves of its famous predecessor.

That's where the family resemblance ends. The SL-1200G threw an enveloping soundstage and populated it with images that were more palpable, stable, and better-defined than the venerable DJ 'table was ever capable of. On "God Bless the Child," from the first stereo pressing of Sonny Rollins's The Bridge (RCA LSP-2527), both Rollins's tenor saxophone in the right channel and Jim Hall's guitar in the left exhibited outstanding weight, texture, and presence, sounding reach-out realistic. Hall's Gibson ES-175 archtop hollow-body electric came across with all of its woodiness and dense harmonic overtones intact, while the satisfying wallop and tunefulness of Bob Cranshaw's acoustic bass showed off the Technics's impressive way with dynamics.

Best of all, in contrast to that old SL-1200, nothing about the SL-1200G's sound can be described as wooly. Its detail retrieval leaves little to the imagination: On "Hammond Song" from the Roches' self-titled 1979 debut (Warner Bros. BSK 3298), the Technics rendered Maggie, Terre, and Suzzy Roche's voices thrillingly distinct from each other and from producer Robert Fripp's otherworldly electric guitar. It did this by presenting the unusual timbres of the singers' voices, their positions in the soundstage, and their close harmonies with exemplary transparency and fidelity.

My vintage Garrard 301 turntable (footnote 2) with the Thomas Schick tonearm (footnote 3) sounded slightly more refined and colorful, revealing a bit of thickness in the midrange of the SL-1200G, whereas the Japanese 'table slightly bettered the Garrard in rhythmic authority, coherence, and drive. In other words, I found little to criticize about the Technics's sound.

Musically, however, the differences between the two record players proved more distinct. Listening to the Technics, I remained aware of a mechanical quality that I could never entirely ameliorate. Music wasn't quite as sultry or free flowing as it is when it's reproduced with the Garrard, and I wasn't able to forget myself and become emotionally engrossed in my records as reliably.

Conclusion Then again, I can think of few turntables that offer as much value as the SL-1200G. The quality of its engineering and execution makes typical audiophile products look slightly homemade, and I'm willing to bet that it will remain as bulletproof as the legendary DJ deck on which it's based. Speaking of which, the similarity between the two is largely cosmetic: The SL-1200G offers performance that the SL-1200 could only dream of. Whether it's the turntable for you depends on your sonic and musical priorities. The Technics isn't for romantics: It will not make you smell the cigarette smoke at the Baobab Club in Dakar or feel the worn wood of the pews in Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. What it will do is reproduce the music on your records with faultless sonics and probably last into the next century. If this sounds appealing, try to audition one.

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Footnote 1: Like its Technics predecessors, the S-shaped SL-1200G tonearm has a detachable headshell.

Footnote 2: The original Garrard, of course, is long out of production. SME sells a very authentic "reproduction" that uses some original Garrard parts and makes the rest to original specifications; see the late Art Dudley's review. Just under $20,000 when reviewed, one dealer website currently has it listed at $25,662. Vintage models in good shape are rare, available, and expensive—though not that expensive.

Footnote 3: The design of the original Schick tonearm has undergone some minor revisions, but it's functionally pretty much the same as the version Art Dudley reviewed way back in 2010.