Technics SL-1200GS Review: A Bomb Proof Classic

The SL-1300G arrives fitted with a lightweight, rigid aluminum pipe tonearm. It’s 9 inches long, and is the standard static-balance S-shape Technics has long 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 use to connect your SL-1300G to an amplifier are a) gold-plated, and b) buried deep underneath the body of the deck. It seems rather tightfisted of Technics to supply a expensive, lavishly specified record player like this with the sort of humdrum, run-of-the-mill stereo interconnects that your $50 CD player came with, but at least there are connections there in the box, along with a lead for mains power. What you won’t find is a cartridge and this, I’d suggest, is approaching “unforgivable” as an omission.

No Cartridge

For this money, not only do I expect the manufacturer to have researched and identified the cartridge it thinks most appropriate for use with its record player, but to have prefitted it to its headshell for my convenience. As it stands, you’re looking at around $500 (minimum) for a cartridge capable of doing the SL-1300G justice, and who knows how long fitting and balancing it would take—cartridge fitment is a notoriously tricky feat of manual labor that no one looks forward to. I honestly think it would better serve its customers if Technics supplied and fitted a decent cartridge and then added the cost to the asking price.

Still, as far as the sound of the Technics SL-1300G is concerned, there’s really only one aspect in which it’s not straightforwardly excellent. This is not an inexpensive turntable and it gets pricier still by the time it’s actually ready to function, but the way it performs goes an awfully long way toward making the outlay seem fair enough.

Great Sound

Both in terms of the way it goes about things on a sonic level and the sort of music it’s comfortable dealing with, the SL-1300G has what sporty types like to refer to as “an all-court game.” It doesn’t matter if you ask it to play a copy of Orff’s “Carmina Burana” as performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, Chorus, and Boys Choir under Michael Tilson Thomas or a disc of James Holden’s Imagine This is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities, it’s all the same to the Technics. In every circumstance it’s a brilliantly poised, endlessly musical, profoundly analytical, and uncomplicatedly entertaining listen.

On the analysis side, the SL-1300G is approaching forensic. At every point of the frequency range it can identify and contextualize even the most transient, fleeting, and/or minor occurrences in a recording, give them appropriate weighting, and position them confidently on its large and spacious soundstage. Even where the most negligible harmonic variations in a voice or instrument are concerned, the Technics pounces on them like its life depended on it. This is not at the expense of the overall picture, but when you get up close to it, you find it’s alive with the fine details that make for a convincing and coherent whole.