Technics 2

History

For the aficionados this section will be a feast, but as vinyl is regaining popularity all over the globe the following facts should be interesting to the average person too.

The SL1200 and SL1210 have quite a history on their own, but the actual machine has come a long way. The turntable was a true revolution in music when first introduced. This section takes a short look at the history of the "gramophone" and digs deep into the Technics SL family tree.

The gramophone

The gramophone, also known as the phonograph, is an instrument for reproducing sound by transmitting to the air (directly or indirectly) the mechanical vibrations of a stylus in contact with a sinuous groove in a moving record. The first audible reproduction of recorded sound was accomplished by Thomas A. Edison in 1876.
During the very early days of the turntable, as it is commonly known these days, the recording of an LP (Long Play) required singers, orchestras etc. to be placed before the mouth of a large horn, which was used to concentrate the sound energy on the recording diaphragm.
One also had to manually drive the turntable until in 1896 the first mechanical turntable for playing the records was introduced. Many aspects of the early designs of the turntable provided distortion in the reproduction of sound. One of these weak points was the tonearm which was frequently a piece of straight tubing and therefore the design was later improved to become a tapering continuation of the horn.

Around 1925 reasonable quality of sound had been obtained, but the knowledge of the fundamental principles was so imperfect that there was a wide margin between the original and the reproduced sound.

The breakthrough came from the telephone and communications industry. The new knowledge of the characteristics of speech and music, the measuring techniques and the new instruments (microphones, amplifiers and loudspeakers) produced by these industries started an entirely fresh approach to the problems related to the phonograph. As a result the new turntables came to bear little resemblance to those prior to 1925. It was in 1926 when an operating speed of 33-1/3 rpm was first used instead of 78 rpm.

During the next two decades record companies offered the public different sizes and speeds of LP's, none of which could play uninterrupted for more than 20 minutes. This shortcoming sparked the popularity of the Record players or record changers as they were sometimes referred to.

Until the middle of the 20th century most commercial phonographs did not have a uniform turntable speed and prior to 1935 they needed frequent stylus or needle changes. There were many different materials used in phonographs and the most common stylus used in playing lateral type records was the steel needle. A diamond stylus provides better sound reproduction and a longer life, but the expense of the jewel material and the cost of grinding to a suitable shape limited their commercial acceptance.

Before WWII two trends developed were to become very important after the war. The further development of pickups and the use of plastic molded records enabled the use of sapphire styluses to become widespread by 1950.

The use of the phonograph continued to grown until around 1980 when its digital counterpart was introduced: the compact disc.

The Technics SL family

The SL1200MKII has a much larger family and longer history than most people think. The SL1200 is just one turntable out of many other SLs and it had its own predecessors too. In this paragraph I want to give you a general look at the SL1200MKII's history.

It all started when Technics released its first Direct Drive system back in 1970 called the SP-10. It was a gigantic turntable with no arm. One year later they introduced the SL1100, which can be considered to be the first version of the SL1200MKII. It was quite massive too and had an S-shaped arm. It had a start/stop button and the option to put on a SME arm.

Then in 1972 Technics came up with the SL1200 after introducing the SL110 earlier that year. The SL110 had the same specs as the SL1100, but didn't come with the arm. The year after Technics made the SL120, which was the armless version of the SL1200 just like the SL110 and the SL1100. The first version of the SL1200 had pot-meters for pitch control, just like the SL1100 and SL110. It was only in 1979 that the SL1200 came with a slide fader for pitch control and it was renamed in 1980 as the SL1200Mark2 after the special rubber/aluminum die-cast cabinet was added. The SP-12 was also introduced as a smaller version (like the SP-10) of the SL1200.

In 1974 the first of a big family was born from the SL1200, namely the SL1300. It looks just like the SL1200, but it was fully automatic. In 1975 came the SP-10MKII, which had some sort of a (wired) remote control and an external power supply. In the same year Technics also released the SL1350. This one looked like a SL1100, but had the same features (auto start/stop, memo and pitch) like the original SL1300. It was a year Technics certainly felt very productive since it also released the SL1500 as a fully manual version of the SL1300 (fully automatic) and the SL1400 (semi-automatic).
The whole series SL1200/1300/1400 and 1500 is also available in black and are named with the extra ten in the type-number (SL1210/1310/1410 and 1510). In May 1977 the SL1300/1400 and 1500 also came in MKII version. In that same month the SL1650 and SL1950 were introduced as Direct Drive auto-changer player systems.

Since 1996 there is a limited version of the SL1200MKII on the market known as the SL1200MKLTD. This turntable has a black piano-finish, an added pitch-reset button, a golden arm and platter and there are only 10000 units made for the entire world.

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