Since when? As to your other points, however expensive hi-fi seem to be, it has never been a spectacularly profitable industry. And that's why even industry stalwarts regularly sell out and exist the business. Remember Philips, Telefunken. SONY, Panasonic? And many other, smaller brands. The latest one being Sennheiser - they just sold themselves to a Swiss hearing aid company, after three generations in the same family. So, to stay in business, you need to make a profit. To make a profit, you need to raise prices, which hurts your competitiveness, or find savings somewhere. Not much savings can be found in Japan nowadays. So they looked elsewhere and found Malaysia. By moving there, they may have actually saved the business of making turntables, instead of exiting it... again. It's easy to jump to conclusions and just condemn people for greed. You want to do that - start closer to home. Talk about our healthcare, health insurance, BIG Pharma. Plenty of topics to dissect and condemn. But no, it's the Technics turntable that gets your righteous indignation.
Where I disagree with you is that Panasonic, formerly Matsushita Electric, has a long history of excellent global manufacturing, including making TVs in the US, speakers in Puerto Rico, batteries pretty much around the world for decades, among many other products, in addition to Japan, where there is local pride that can be used for marketing. I have more trust in their products even when from China, because they make them in house, train their employees, have excellent design and assembly, QC, and outsource some, but very little. i.e. they still control most of the product and make a lot of the components. Panasonic has been making audio equipment in Johor, Malaysia for decades. Yes, some manufacturers of other products make better stuff in some plants than others, or you have to trust the outsourcing. This is not one of them. And no I don't work for them. I just have stuff that is 10, 20, 30 years old that still works from them and made all over. Quality is mostly the same. Really good.
Yes, but Panasonic no longer makes audio. If anything is still marketed with that brand - it's a licensing deal, not made by Panasonic.
They made my both my absolutely amazing Lumix S1R camera and the world-class S Pro 50mm F/1.4 lens that sits on it (though Leica helped in both cases ;-).
What savings will they have? Are they allowed to legally terminate their Japanese employees due to outsourcing? Or are they doing something else? Isn't Technics a brand name of Panasonic? Not a company? Panasonic is huge and into much more than consumer electronics. Last year the Japanese government made a big move ($$$$) to bring back jobs from China. This is likely a labor shortage, other needs, issue rather than 'cheaper'.. Unemployment rate ~2.5% and falling.
Panasonic is just one brand of the Matsushita Electric group. The others are National and Matsushita (for domestic and other markets), and Technics, which has always been a separate specialty group doing nothing but audio/video. Panasonic as a brand has exited the mainstream audio business, in which it was a powerhouse worldwide for decades.
This. It's not like a turn table is an artisanal one-of-a-kind product. It's really just the assembly of the thing that is being outsourced. As long as the design and quality of the components are good, I really don't care to puts it together.
If Americans can build Toyotas and Hondas that go to 250,000-300,000 miles just like the models built in Japan I'm sure Malaysians can build Technics turntables that are just as good as the ones built in Japan as well.
Hard to believe that the movement of production of tables would garner so many posts, covering so many topics! While I expect it to, we won't really know if quality will be equal until the new production hits the streets. I just hope no design/part changes are made to enhance production numbers.
I worked for Matsushita/Panasonic/Technics for twelve years. They manufacture audio, video and other product categories in Matsushita factories all over the world. When they shift production of a product to another Matsushita factory in another country they move the entire assembly line to the new location. Much of the process, even for turntables, is automated. The employees at the new assembly location follow the same protocol as the previous one. That is why Panasonic/Technics products have been known for quality manufacturing for decades regardless of the country of manufacturing.
I believe it was April 1 of this year. Making the lower models in Malaysia appears to have been a water-tester, and they have now moved all turntable production out of Japan.
Leica has historically done the same model as Panasonic when moving production to another country; in Leica's case, Canada and Portugal. No degradation of quality in any way. Some companies just know how to manufacture!
I have no doubt the product will be just as good. Technics did kind of bring some of this backlash (if you could even call it that... we’ve got, what, like half a dozen, maybe ten people even complaining about it on a forum for audio nerds?) on itself by playing up the “made in Japan by skilled craftsmen” thing with the higher models for the past few years. I also wouldn’t, personally, feel great about rewarding a company who has, apparently, laid off a portion of its workforce to move production to a lower-cost labor market. But I really doubt buying a new GR is going to leave a person with any less great a turntable than I have. I’d probably consider one of the less expensive models since there is no part of the additional expense going toward paying higher labor costs anymore, but it’s probable I would have considered one of the less expensive models if I was buying a turntable now, anyway.
Incorrect, but yes for many mass market AV products they are out of the market. They still make some AV for other markets. Most things with their brand (Panasonic or Technics) on it are made by them. They have licensed the Sanyo brand to 3rd parties, after acquiring Sanyo, but that is mainly because they no longer use the Sanyo brand anymore for their own products. Panasonic has many manufacturing plants in Malaysia.
The move of production has mostly to do with economies of scale in the Japanese consumer electronics industry, which has been devastated by Chinese companies, outsourcing trend of assembly (Foxconn type companies), but also just technology movement to IT/PC/phone devices and away from hardware. What makes Panasonic unique is that they are one of the largest components makers in the world, so the parts go in others' devices too. The volume isn't there, so either move upmarket or consolidate production with other products in a plant. Last time I was at the Akihabara Electric district in Tokyo - it was shocking to see the TV business was down to 5 Japanese TV brands total. That was 7 years ago. Audio was already consolidating to a handful left already and mostly low end portables. Most of those high demand in the past stereos, CD players, boomboxes, walkmans have been replaced by phones and wireless speakers, etc. Mostly made or designed by other companies. The Japanese really got caught out as an industry by the move to IT based media vs. hardware.
My Indiana built Civic 2010 still going strong at 247,000 miles....and no timing belt like my 1994 Civic either lol.
I don't hear many complaints about the Technics decks that have been made in Malaysia for the last few years..?..
That’s not an entirely level comparison, though, because those have been lower-priced models in the first place. I have seen complaints, but they are not things that we can know Japanese manufacture would have resolved, because they are down to differences between models (the tonearm lift on the 1500C sometimes not working correctly is the main one that comes to mind; no current MIJ model has that). It’ll take a period of GR and G decks turning out to be exactly the same as the MIJ units to convince people. I do expect that to be what happens. As for the 100C, this really isn’t a factor. That one was always going to be MIM, and it should be essentially the same quality as 1500C, since it’s almost exactly the same model and probably most of the same parts.
Sure, I'm just referring to feedback re build quality in general. There will be some complaints about every deck, including the GRs and Gs. I also thought there may have been MK models that moved from Japan to Malaysia, maybe not the case.
So are we sure the 100C is going to be for sale via US Amazon? I've checked and it seems they'd have it up for pre-order if that was the case. I'm hoping to get one on release.
