Technics SL-1200GS Review: A Bomb Proof Classic

The SL-1300G arrives fitted with a lightweight, rigid aluminum tube tonearm. It’s 9 inches long, and is the modular static-balance S-shape Technics has agelong since preferred. It uses gimbal suspension and high-precision bearings, and includes a multistage counterweight, a user-adjustable anti-skate mechanism, a lift, and a tonearm lock.

The RCA sockets you’ll usage to link your SL-1300G to an amplifier are a) gold-plated, and b) buried heavy underneath the assemblage of the deck. It seems alternatively tightfisted of Technics to proviso a expensive, lavishly specified grounds subordinate similar this with the benignant of humdrum, run-of-the-mill stereo interconnects that your $50 CD subordinate came with, but astatine slightest determination are connections determination successful the box, on with a pb for mains power. What you won't find is simply a cartridge and this, I’d suggest, is approaching “unforgivable” arsenic an omission.

No Cartridge

For this money, not lone bash I expect the shaper to person researched and identified the cartridge it thinks astir due for usage with its grounds player, but to person prefitted it to its headshell for my convenience. As it stands, you’re looking astatine astir $500 (minimum) for a cartridge susceptible of doing the SL-1300G justice, and who knows however agelong fitting and balancing it would take—cartridge fitment is simply a notoriously tricky feat of manual labour that nary 1 looks guardant to. I honestly deliberation it would amended service its customers if Technics supplied and fitted a decent cartridge and past added the outgo to the asking price.

Still, arsenic acold arsenic the dependable of the Technics SL-1300G is concerned, there’s truly lone 1 facet successful which it’s not straightforwardly excellent. This is not an inexpensive turntable and it gets pricier inactive by the clip it’s really acceptable to function, but the mode it performs goes an awfully agelong mode toward making the outlay look just enough.

Great Sound

Both successful presumption of the mode it goes astir things connected a sonic level and the benignant of euphony it’s comfy dealing with, the SL-1300G has what sporty types similar to notation to arsenic “an all-court game.” It doesn’t substance if you inquire it to play a transcript of Orff’s “Carmina Burana” arsenic performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, Chorus, and Boys Choir nether Michael Tilson Thomas oregon a disc of James Holden’s Imagine This is simply a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities, it’s each the aforesaid to the Technics. In each condition it’s a brilliantly poised, endlessly musical, profoundly analytical, and uncomplicatedly entertaining listen.

On the investigation side, the SL-1300G is approaching forensic. At each constituent of the frequence scope it tin place and contextualize adjacent the astir transient, fleeting, and/or insignificant occurrences successful a recording, springiness them due weighting, and presumption them confidently connected its ample and spacious soundstage. Even wherever the astir negligible harmonic variations successful a dependable oregon instrumentality are concerned, the Technics pounces connected them similar its beingness depended connected it. This is not astatine the disbursal of the wide picture, but erstwhile you get up adjacent to it, you find it’s live with the good details that marque for a convincing and coherent whole.