Technics Turntables Sl Series Series Called My

Technics Turntables Sl Series Series Called My

I then went to an Uncle Jams Army Dance and played with a Technics 1200 turntable and lost my mind, Egyptian Lover told the New York record and equipment shop, Turntable Lab, in an interview series called My First 1200.

The techniques found on The Adventures werent new scratches and high-speed cuts between two records had been performed many times, by Flash himself and other DJs but this is the first time they were all found together in one place on vinyl.

I say that not in terms of it being a luxury item, though; it is expensive, but it is a crucial touchstone in hip-hop history.

These decks have been the standard for DJs spinning records since the 1970s.

They speak of them in rhapsodic terms, not so much as record-laying machines but as extensions of their creative selves.

For most of its history from the earliest phonograph invented by Thomas Edison in 1877 to the Emile Berliners Gramophone, with its hand-crank action and flared horn jutting into the room the record player required care.

You use your hands to put the record on the device and put the needle in place, but once playback started, any contact with it might cause problems, never mind bumping the table or jumping up and down.

Records were prone to skipping and the cheaper models had audible speed fluctuations, and as for reliably manipulating a record while it was spinning, forget it.

Idler wheel turntables could get up to speed fairly quickly, but it was an engineering challenge to keep vibrations from the high-RPM motor from affecting play (not to mention that the idler wheels themselves wore out over time), and they didnt hold their speed particularly well.

They reinforced the notion that the turntable is a fragile device designed for extracting sound from records under very particular conditions.

By coupling a slower-spinning motor directly to the platter, Obatas unit offered unusually precise speed in a durable design.

Two years later, the company rolled another Obata creation, the SL-1200, descended from the SP-10.

It wasnt cheap, retailing for 350 about 2,100 in 2020 dollars but over the next few years, it grew in popularity, especially with DJs in radio and in clubs.

The Thorens TD-125, an audiophile table beloved by legendary DJ Larry Levan, was roughly the same weight.

But the Technics unit was unusually rugged for a turntable, able to play perfectly when subjected to heavy use by DJs in both a club or radio set.

This was due to the high-torque motor, and that the decks quartz-locked speed was so consistent (the electromechanical properties of quartz, a common mineral, had been used to improve the accuracy of clocks and watches since the 1920s).

The SL-1200 pairs a robust motor and heavy platter with a solid base of metal and heavy rubber, which further dampens vibration.

In this decade, there was a lot of overlap between the club systems and the world of hi-fi, and among some audiophiles, there was skepticism about direct-drive turntables.

The belt was thought by some to be crucial for isolating the platter from the motor and reducing noise.

It took some time for the 1200 to win over skeptics, but the SL-1200 MK2, released in 1979, went a long way on that front.

This update, among other improvements, moved the pitch adjustment mechanism to a slider on the top of the base, which made tweaking precise speed much easier and beat-matching more accessible.

Those qualities, combined with a much-improved pitch control, which easily altered the speed - 8 via a slider on the plinth, meant that the 1200 was on its way to being a tool not just of music playback, but of music creation.

If you wanted to DJ, there was one turntable you needed to own, and every DJ who came of age during that era remembers their excitement of first cueing up a record.