Home > Reviews > Technics SL1200/1210 MK2 Pro Turntable

Review date : August 2001

If you haven't heard of the Technics SL1200/10, then you have no interest in djing or have just spent the last 30 years doing hard labour in Siberia.  They are by far the most widely known and used deck on the planet, my dad has probably heard of them!!

Based on a design of turntable that was released in the 1970s (copied by almost every turntable manufacturer) they are steeped in history and rightly so.  Anyway enough of the arse licking, what are they like to use?

First of all there are two models the SL1200 and SL1210, the only difference is the colour (SL1200s are silver, 1210s are black).  The machine is nice and sturdy as it's aluminium casing weighs in at a hefty 11kg so if you're going to be shifting them around from gig to gig, it'll be time to get down the gym :-)

Since their release in the 1980s nothing has been able to touch them on performance, basically if you can't learn to mix on these decks give up 'cos you ain't gonna make it!!  Near perfect wow and flutter (even better than the Vestax PDX2000!!) at 0.025% WRMS this means that two tracks playing at the same speed are not going to go out of sync at any time, a dream for us beatmixers!  The starting torque (1.5kg/cm) isn't shabby either, although it doesn't compare to the newer Vestax or the new super decks (Numark's TTX1 & Gemini's PDT 6000)

The major downfall is the lack of features as compared to the newer decks, but as it was designed for mainly home hi-fi use this can be excused also as there are no bits and bobs, there is less chance of any malfunctions.  The only other criticisms (minor ones albeit) are the pitch fader as it is limited to -+8% and can get a bit fiddly when fine tuning around the 0% quartz lock mark as the fader knob can 'jump' to the quartz lock marker when you'd rather it didn't!  The power switch is also easily knocked a djs worst nightmare if there ever was one, but as long as you don't down 15 pints you should be ok.

Overall though you can see why this deck has had nothing to worry about as regards to competition because it is top notch.  As a stand alone basic no frills turntable there is nothing that gets even remotely close.  It's taken almost 3 decades for the other manufacturers to develop a turntable (Vestax PDX2000) to give the SL12's a run for their money, I personally prefer the Vestax as you get more for roughly the same cost only time will tell if the rest of the djing community thinks the same. 

Price approx £630 a pair.

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