Technics 1200GR vs alternatives

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Giacomo Belbo, Sep 24, 2018.

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  1. Darren8

    Darren8 Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Ct
    I did tap the plinth during my audition and heard nothing from the speakers which were the same ones I own. So I’m all ready to fire it up this week.
    Sorry if I hijacked the technics 1200gr vs Alternatives but as I said a few weeks ago. Technics was on my short list and it turns out the c-sharp was the alternative.
    D
     
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  2. Slick Willie

    Slick Willie Decisively Indecisive

    Location:
    sweet VA.

    All cool, as the title says... "vs alternatives", I just didn't want to derail, not suggesting you did. And I'm sure you'll love your new table!
    At these price points, it's hard to find something that is not sweet!
     
  3. Davey

    Davey NP: Portishead ~ Portishead (1997)

    Location:
    SF Bay Area, USA
    No problem, I was just curious, I don't have one but I do like the overall design.
     
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  4. sturgus

    sturgus Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis Mo
    Congratulations on your new table. I have read good things about them. Let us know what you think. I have a sneaking suspicion you will be grinning from ear to ear. As far as phonostages go sky's the limit. I would suggest looking at Graham Sleep products. If you go to their website and join the forum you can audition them in your home for just the price of shipping. They will usually give you a few weeks to try out in your system. It's kinda based on the honor system. I would suggest the Accenssion, the Reflex, and the Era Gold, although there are others in the line that are very nice. This is not to say that there aren't other nice pre's, they're the only ones that I know that has this in home audition. I also like the Sutherland products, and the Vista Audio gear. Rothwell Audio and Lounge should also be looked at.
    Enjoy!!!
     
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  5. displayname

    displayname Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dallas
    Congrats on the new table! Letting your ears decide is always best, so good on you for shopping that way.
    As far as phonostages, I believe that is regularly the most overlooked part of the analog chain. Set a solid budget, sky is the limit. Everyone will be partial to their favorites, which can be a good starting list to consider. Have fun with the process!
     
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  6. Anjo

    Anjo Active Member

    Location:
    Nederland
    would like to share this with all of you
     
  7. Sterling1

    Sterling1 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Louisville, KY
    Seems that Craig is obsessed with it all. There's a battle waging in his head with one side defending budget turntables and the other pushing for upgrading. One thing for sure, his ambivalent opinions give me a headache; and, since I'm a critical thinker, Craig's thoughts on it all have not borne upon my turntable/cartridge buying decisions. Nevertheless, I am attracted to his video's, perhaps because his views are as conflicted as mine, which is in some perverse way, entertaining to watch.
     
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  8. rlwings

    rlwings Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    Exactly! The G series cueing mechanism doesn't dampen the movement while raising the arm, therefore requiring the operator move the arm SLOWLY while raising, otherwise the arm will start to bounce... Lowering the arm is another story. There is no dampening near the top of the range but the dampening does engaging about half way down. So the cueing mechanism needs to be adjusted high enough to allow the dampening to take hold on the way down, otherwise the needle will free-fall onto the record... I think the problem is that some of us are used to cueing mechanisms that dampen both the up and down motions, and we are used to raising the lever quickly as it would have no effect on the actual speed of raising the arm. Not so here. The Technics mechanism will train the operator to move more slowly over time which might account for claims that the arm settles down over time. :)
     
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  9. Drewan77

    Drewan77 Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK/USA
    Curious @rlwings, my 1200G cueing mechanism is dampened and smooth both up/down and NEVER free falls, whatever I do.

    Having said that, I purchased one of the very early Gs sold in the UK, in stock & delivered almost immediately. The strobe dots look stationary during play & the brass/alu platter remains visually flat even when rotating. Without an LP, it is hard to tell anything is moving.

    The only 'tolerance' I detect anywhere is slight rotation of the entire tonearm assembly, possible only when the VTH locking lever is released but I reason that this is of no importance because this is on the arc of the arm & is rigid when the lever locks. (...oh, and I can twist the headshell slightly before tightening but this is great for adjusting azimuth so for me it's a bonus)

    Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones & this was manufactured carefully when the guys in Japan weren't under pressure to meet increasing demand? This 1200G was.... and remains.... near perfect.
     
    Last edited: Jul 5, 2019
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  10. rlwings

    rlwings Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    I have to agree that Rega tables are disappointing. For me it was build quality...

    I recently purchased two Rega P1's which gave me an opportunity to compare build quality and consistency between units (The serial numbers were very far apart)... My first P1 came with significant scuff marks on the top of the dust cover due to insufficient packaging design. I know this to be an issue because the second P1 came with the exact same scuff marks in the exact same place! ... Next, my second P1 came with an inordinately loose tonearm. You could move it in it's base and see and feel it's unintended motion very clearly. The first P1 was tight... And finally, the mat thickness differed between the two decks significantly which caused different VTA's. And after replacing the two mats with two same-thickness mats, the VTA's were still off by a significant margin! Which means that arm mount\hardware and or main bearing\sub-platter\platter tolerances were off! Which one was right??

    The bottom line is that Rega has very inconsistent build quality and tolerances which quickly erodes a sense of confidence in the brand... Most people are unaware because they usually buy one deck and not two at a time.

    Now, turn the page to today. Just received two 1210GR's and once again had the opportunity to compare... Can you guess the result? ... Absolute consistency! In fact I cannot tell them apart. There are no differentiating markers anywhere to be found. The tightest most consistent brand I've ever seen... I put Technics newer decks up against any Rega made today. There is no question Technics is better. Solid substantial, ease of use, and engineered to perfection, period.

    Oh, ok, fine, Rega has a better queing arm. (When it works. One of my two p1's cueing arms had rough movement as you moved the lever.) :) - Overly simplistic featureless loosey-goosey overpriced brand. - Never again- The real fanboys are the Rega lovers, basking in denial, while Technics owners are rooted in reality with their verifiably substantial and superior machines sitting before them.
     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2019
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  11. SNDVSN

    SNDVSN Forum Resident

    Location:
    Glasgow
    The GR is 5 times the price of the P1, what do you expect!
     
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  12. Agitater

    Agitater Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    Comparisons of this kind, whether they've been made up or actually done, amount to trolling. Arbitrarily ordering two turntables at a time at wildly different price points makes no sense.

    Comparing a $450 turntable to a $2000 turntable (in Toronto) is only faintly rational. The thread title does state “... Technics 1200GR vs Alternatives” but it is pointless to compare an entry-level low cost TT to a mid-priced TT costing more than four times as much.

    Photos of the two P1 TT lids please. Rega and Panasonic/Technics have each been at this a long time. Both companies have secure packaging methods that ensure their products arrive unmarked.

    In Toronto, given the vagaries of pricing from country to country, compare the performance of a Technics SL1200 GR to a Rega P6 or a Pro-ject 2Xperience SB using the same cartridge. What you’ll find (if you’re not laughing yourself silly while trolling), is that while the engineering methods are very different all three turntables do a wonderful job of reproducing music. Choose the design and/or the small differences in sound that suit you best and choose that turntable.

    Carping about a scuffed lid or an allegedly rough lift on a P1 is irrelevant. Rega engineering has been widely recognized and acclaimed. Same goes for Technics and for the better Pro-ject turntables among others. Elsewhere on this forum is a thread about non-plane/wobbly SL1200GR platters, so how do you account for that problem? If the owners of the allegedly defective platters aren't imagining things (their video footage isn’t convincing), it’s still not an indictment of Technics because all mass manufacturing by its very nature generates a few flaws here and there. Mass production was never designed solely to improve manufacturing quality. It was meant to improve manufacturing efficiency and reduce manufacturing costs, and it does that.

    Just like Rega tables for the very most part, Technics tables for the very most part provide an effectively excellent standard of quality right out of the box. Anybody who believes or insists otherwise is deliberately ignoring the decades-long success of each company and the hundreds of thousands of satisfied customers who’ve been enjoying their music instead of carping publicly about lid scuffs and platters.

    Rega dealers in Toronto will happily replace any defective part because the Rega distributor in Canada keeps such things on hand. Same goes for Technics. Many companies with such global brands do that.
     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2019
  13. displayname

    displayname Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dallas
    I agree, that comparison wasn't really valuable. A P6 vs 1200GR would be the fair comparison.
     
  14. BayouTiger

    BayouTiger Forum Resident

    I don't disagree, but for many, comparing a $450 table to a $2000 table is completely legit as they are looking to figure out what the $2k buys them that they don't get on the lesser one. I have friends that have A-T LP120's and it would be nigh impossible to convince them that their table is not exactly the same as my GR. And for their purposes, they are right.
     
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  15. Slick Willie

    Slick Willie Decisively Indecisive

    Location:
    sweet VA.
    I own a MH 2.2 and a MH 7.1.
    While these tables are very different designs and offer different sonic results, the build quality is similar, if not identical.
    So, I don't see that comparing the build quality of a RP1 to a GR is unfair.
    The fit/finish/tolerances of a RP1 should be identical to - say a RP8. After all, are they not made at the same factory?
     
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  16. swvahokie

    swvahokie Forum Resident

    The fit/finish/tolerances are much higher on a Rega RP8 vs an RP1. The only thing that is the same is the name. Same factory yes, not on the same line, and not with the same materials or tolerances. The Fremer factory tour actually showed the process.
     
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  17. Slick Willie

    Slick Willie Decisively Indecisive

    Location:
    sweet VA.

    That's troubling. I would expect the same.....not speaking about better materials, but craftmanship should be the same.
     
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  18. Randoms

    Randoms Aerie Faerie Nonsense

    Location:
    UK
    I cannot answer for Rega today, but I sold Rega turntables for around a dozen years up to 1995 and in that time the faults were, 1 motor board, 1 broken arm bearing housing (customer had an "accident"), 4 broken cartridge tags, 1 of which I broke the other three a customer on the same arm and 1 arm needing rewiring. This was out of a few thousand turntables and Rega were always a pleasure, though a little idiosyncratic to deal with.

    A large bag of cartridge tags arrived FOC in the post the next day, and all of the above were fixed free of charge - outstanding!
     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2019
  19. Bill Hart

    Bill Hart Forum Resident

    Location:
    Austin
    I haven't run a direct drive turntable since the mid-'80s, when I abandoned my Technics SP-10 in favor of a belt drive turntable (an original Well-Tempered that was eventually tweaked out to the max) followed by a couple of turntables from Kuzma, including the high mass XL.
    I recently decided to bring my vintage SP-10 back on line. It was restored and updated by Bill Thalmann. Although it may not be directly relevant to the discussion here, I'm interested in seeing how it performs against a high dollar belt drive.
    The turntable is almost ready to be set up-I'm waiting for an additional isolation platform and have a little more work to do in fitting the arm.
    [​IMG]IMG_0971 by bill hart, on Flickr
    One issue was aftermarket platter mats. Though I have the original mat for the SP 10, I'm curious about the effects of the mat. There is a huge range and I may try some others, but I started by buying a sheet of EAR ISODAMP which will be cut to conform to the size of the original mat: [​IMG]IMG_0970 by bill hart, on Flickr
    I'm trying to avoid getting all spendy on this project. Though I have a variety of fancy cartridges, the first one I'm going to try is a Denon 103 that was Frankensteined by Steve Leung- potted in a wooden body with a microridge stylus.
     
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  20. swvahokie

    swvahokie Forum Resident

    Craftmanship is not tolerances. Tolerances get much tighter as the models rise. I think the tonearm lifters are all the same. Obviously bad ones are discarded or replaced, then everything else is sorted. Smoothest best finish is going to be put in an 8 or 10. Least smooth is a P1.
     
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  21. Bill Hart

    Bill Hart Forum Resident

    Location:
    Austin
    The Steve Leung Frankencartridge, mentioned above, based on a Denon 103:

    [​IMG]IMG_0968 by bill hart, on Flickr
     
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  22. Slick Willie

    Slick Willie Decisively Indecisive

    Location:
    sweet VA.

    I understand that, well sorta', craftmanship includes tolerances.
     
  23. Bob_in_OKC

    Bob_in_OKC Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dallas, Texas
    Rega info once said the RB1000 tonearm takes twenty times longer to produce than the RB301. Only two highly experienced technicians could build it. I assume that situation would also be troubling.
     
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  24. BayouTiger

    BayouTiger Forum Resident

    I doubt seriously that they bin the lifters and dish them out to the lines as such. The process would cost more than the part. Such parts are normally machined together and inspection would be pass/fail. Of course Rega does several things that I can't explain so who knows???
     
  25. Agitater

    Agitater Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    Except, that’s not the comparison he posted. Except, also, that you can’t lift two turntables out of thousands and call them exemplary of the whole brand, which is what the poster did and with no photos to illustrate his obvious rant against Rega. At the same time as he criticized Rega fan-boys, he touted Technics (just like a fan-boy). I say, recognize a troll post deliberately or inadvertently made - I can’t tell which - when they’re that obvious.
     
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