It will probably be much lighter than the aluminium arm and stiffer, depending on the alloy type. This tube will be made from a low percentage alloy of some sort that will be mostly magnesium. You can set fire to pure magnesium and it’ll burn like one of those old fashioned fuses that blow up dynamite. “For a start, it won’t only be magnesium” said Nilsen. Improved feet can improve isolation and reduce damaging noise entering into the turntable but is this new arm tube really anything to shout about? I asked Johnnie Nilsen, who makes some of the best turntable arms in the world via his own, UK-based Audio Origami company ( Is a ‘magnesium’ arm worthy of attention? On the limited edition, it is made from magnesium.” The main difference, though, is the arm tube. Shall we start from the ground up?, “The construction of the feet uses a different rubber type on the limited edition model. I talked to Technics’ own Jonathan Danbury for a quick chat about the technical details of the turntable, which spans 453 x 173 x 372 mm and weighs in at 18kg, and asked him to lend a few comparisons to the original SL-1200 while he was about it.
The fact that it has DJ fiddly bits tacked on is, as I say, nothing but marketing faff that Technics feel they need to include to cut marketing corners and, who knows, probably please the bean counters and TV fans sitting in Technics’ bosses, Panasonic’s accounting office. This turntable is not a toy, it’s not a working clubber’s tool, it’s a serious turntable. If you look at the SL-1200G turntable in detail, there is a lot of considered and careful work that moves way away from the DJ culture and speeds headlong towards the audiophile community. Directly comparing this turntable to the original shows a complete lack of understanding in this new design and a lack of respect to its engineers and the engineering applied. This deck had no choice but to look like the original SL-1200.įinally, there is one more reason to put distance between the ‘G’ and older 1200 designs. Technics could not afford to ignore this goldmine of exposure.
The only reason(s) Technics retained the basic size, shape and chassis furniture – in my strong opinion – was to cash in on the legend, to show a friendly and acceptable design face that exploits decades of free press and marketing, to cash in on the excitable media who were having orgasms because they saw the classic DJ turntable returning to the fold (apart from a flurry of hi-fi newsprint, no-one would have cared that much if Technics had offered a brand new chassis shape, no-one would have written more than a paragraph or two about it in the lifestyle press). Unless you’re a famous DJ and Technics has given you one for free. It might look like a DJ tool and you might even be foolish to use it as such but really, that would be very silly indeed and an overkill in the extreme. And stop comparing the original design’s price with the price of this model. And stop comparing it to the original model too. OK, look, let’s race to the point here and get a few things straight.įirstly, the SL-1200G is not a DJ deck.
Paul Rigby reviews the Technics SL-1200G and is made aware of a few home truths