The Technics SL-1200 GAE/G/GR general questions thread

I’ve become less convinced locking is even necessary. Have you found the dial slips and VTA changes over time if it’s not locked down?

 

Ehh I don’t get it?
But Hagerman are DIY kits for building phono preamps, right?

 

Fair point... but it can still become a tonearm rigidity issue though, even without actually moving.

 

Locking has a disadvantage as well since it tilts the arm pivot a bit. But if a user doesn't hear any difference one way or the other, probably just do what's most convenient and not worry much about it.

 

Maybe?
At least you’re not using a felt slipmat that sticks to the bottom of the record, falling off when holding them above the cartridge

 

Oh, I’ve been there. It’s happened with felt, a Herbie’s mat, a very thin cork/rubber mat I have... at least the Technics rubber mats are far too heavy to lift off with the record.

 

Jup Technics stands for quality, even now that the stock mats are 3mm instead of 6mm thick

Do you know a store that sells the 6mm mats for a reasonable price?
Would be useful to me to have the 3mm extra VTA headroom.

 

VTA is another reason I thought it might be handy to have around. I have a delrin spacer for my headshell that shims things just fine, but it might be nice not to have to use that.

The site I ordered it from is unfamiliar to me (seems like it’s a DJ site that sells a bunch of Technics parts, which makes sense), so I’d feel more responsible waiting until I’m sure everything is legit before sending anyone else there. Not that it seems like grey market or anything, just that I can’t vouch for anything quite yet. I’ll report back.

 

Yeah, we’ve had some back-and-forth in one of these threads in the past about whether the lock has anything to do with tonearm rigidity, whether the lock tilts the pivot (and whether it’s designed to do so, anyway?), etc, and I’m not really sure if we landed anywhere solid on it, other than maybe just what you said about doing what makes sense to the user and not worrying much about it... FWIW, I think mine is currently unlocked.

 

Sorry! You said the schiit mani was the best entry level phono pre, and my counter was to imply that the hagerman bugle 2 (already built and made shipped direct from Hagerman) for $189 is a great value, high performing phono that I personally would recommend over the schiit mani.

 

Ah okay I don’t really know the Hagerman, only heard about it.
I don’t know if it’s even available within Europe without importing directly from the US.
@Voxy appears to be from Singapore, so that might be different for him, idk.

 

I just heard that the MK7 has a dead pitch between 7 and 8.
Checked my 1200G and it appears that it also has dead pitch between 7 and 8 (never noticed it before, since I use my turntable for playback only).
Is this typical for all new 1200's?
Do other 1200G or 1200GR owners also have this dead pitch range?

 

What is a dead pitch range?

 

No response while moving the pitchfader from 7 to 8.
It just stops at 7.

 

Hagerman sells kits/PCBs as well as pre-made phono preamps.

 

So, it turns out the place I ordered it doesn’t actually have it in stock, and it’s on “indefinite backorder” (which makes sense, as I assume they’re NOS only at this point?). It did seem too good to be true, and I guess it was. Oh well.

 

There is a recent video about this on YT. The dead pitch thing is part of the digital pitch control design and was carried over from the M5G. So it's nothing new, it's only that people are talking about it a lot right now because some buyers expected full pitch range after being accustomed to using a MK2 or MK3.

 

I haven’t used the fader at all, but you could use the x2 setting at the 3.5-4 range for the same result, right?

 

Doesn't surprise me, I already got suspicious they didn't "redesigned from the ground up" as they stated, when it comes to the pitch controller.
The M5G sold really bad with DJs overhere, but I got used to the digital pitchfader fairly quickly.
The 2x option is a viable solution indeed, but makes slowly and fluently changing the pitch significantly harder.
Most complains about the M5G were the delay (I never noticed tbh) and the size of the increments at which the pitchfader works.
The increments on the 1200G seem to be significantly smaller though.

Edit: I don't actually have my M5G's anymore, so I'm comparing it from memory

 

The spindle on the new ones is not as tall as the older 1200's. I guess it follows the thinner 3mm mat.

To get the correct VTA with my Shure V15 IV, which is 16mm tall I had to put a 3mm cork mat on top of the stock 3mm.

Many current cartridges appear to be 18-19mm in height, so that would be more or less okay with the Technics G/GR supplied mat.

It's a little strange to me. Like they measured the arm height and spindle to match as the originals, but then the platter sits higher than the previous models. It looks like they've moulded the main platter to the same dimensions but then of course you then have the brass platter in addition on top. I think that is what has happened.

 

It's higher with the previous models (higher platter means less distance between platter and headshell).
0 VTA equals a 15mm cartridge according tot the 1200mk2 manual (whether this is with 3mm or 6mm mat, idk tbh).
0 VTA equals a 17mm cartridge according to both the 1200G and GR manual.



The biggest issue I had with this is when using Ortofon headshells, that are about 3mm higher than the stock Technics headshells.

 

What I don’t understand about this is that they felt it would be more useful to accommodate cartridges more than 21mm tall (which cartridges are even that tall?) than to allow for cartridges shorter than 17 mm (which is not all that uncommon).

We can work around all that with shims and/or mats, sure, but it’s a design decision that doesn’t match up with my observation of the current cartridge market.

 

I think it's a definite oversight.

 

Completely agree on that.

 

What would be the technical reason behind? It seems that it must be like that by design. Then why they don't correct the markings on the scale? They are certainly misleading.