Indeed the old Technics made a modern $1000 Audiolab 8000CD sound like it was the one that needed to start pumping iron and give up smoking. As it delivers that capacious bass, the SL-P1200 never for a second sounds out of breath - quite the reverse in fact.
TECHNICS SH GE90 REVIEW PRO
In fact, it reminds me of a Meridian MCD Pro in the way it can pile-drive large amounts of barrel-chested low frequencies into the listening room. Move downwards and you're in for a shock, as the Technics has a truly powerful yet relaxed bass. It's certainly nowhere near as hard as I remember late eighties machines being demmed in hi-fi shops at the time. Still, however 'robust' the Technics' upper mid may be, it's not bright like the Sonys of that era, and careful interconnect matching and/or use of a valve amplifier would certainly ameliorate it. For example a $400 Cambridge Audio 640C has a softer upper mid band, making the Technics sound a tad 'chromeplated' on female vocals and strings. My recollection of Japanese machines of this age was that they were shrill and mechanical sounding, and certainly in the first respect the Technics isn't the smoothest around. It's fascinating to put a 'blast from the past' like this against a modern silver disc spinner, and all the more so when you have to conclude that it actually fares rather well. Two Burr Brown PCM54HP DACs are used, there's a headphone amp with its own volume control, and very high quality internal wiring is in evidence. Two separate power transformers - one for digital electronics and the other for analogue sections - are used, and there are independent power supplies everywhere. Inside, it is separated into four main sections, power, CD transport, control/ servo and digital to analogue conversion. By any standards, including those of today, the SL-P1200 is a beautifully built machine.
TECHNICS SH GE90 REVIEW FULL
The display is also big fun, being large and full of flashing legends and numbers - there's a 'music calendar', track time display and even a tenths and hundredths of seconds display for when you do your split second cueing!Īlthough the button-festooned top panel must have delighted spiky haired eighties button pushers, the real surprises were under the hood. The pitch control was virtually unique at the time, and must have seemed amazing to those who get excited about such things. This gave easy access to all its elaborate cueing facilities, such as A-B Repeat for example. Like the SL-P1000, the major sales point for the 'P1200 was the large search dial, this time on the top right of the case instead of the front left of the fascia. Matsushita, Technics' parent company, had already found that adapting its old 1973 SL120 turntable for pro use had proved a nice little earner, and so why not follow the formula for the digital generation? The idea was brilliant - bundle all the front-loading SL-P1000's internal componentry inside a large, robust, top loading casing with a vast angled display, making it ideal for 'pro' nightclub use. Like the turntable with which it shared a model number (and indeed feet!), the 1200 was a 'pro' design made for nightclub use, and like the turntable of the same name it was very robustly made - more so than the SL-1200, as it happens. Still the most interesting thing in the new 1987 Technics catalogue was the SL-P1200, a (then) unfashionable top loading CD spinner with a pitch control and 'jog dial' offering precise and accurate control of cueing. The first generation SLP10 had recently made way for the SL-P1000 which was a redoubtable design, just about able to hold its own with monstrously priced (and sized) behemoths like Sony's CDP-557ESD. They were very 'eighties looking' machines - big, fussy fascias festooned with facilities and vast, needlessly complex fluorescent displays. Cambridge Audio's CD1 remained arguably the best sounding silver disc spinner on the planet, despite being a heavily reworked first generation Philips CD104, and lacking the build quality of the ever-better sounding Japanese 'battleships' coming from across the sea.Īt the time, Technics was an extremely strong hi-fi brand, and nowhere was it more impressive than in CD players. Philips' TDA1541 sixteen bit, four times oversampling DAC was just beginning its strong but shortlived bid for global fame, appearing in the newest high end Arcam, Missions and Sonys. In Europe, we were all running variants of first generation machines, the Marantz CD54 and Meridian MCD being big sellers in the audiophile community. Nineteen eighty seven was a transitional year for the world's first mass digital music carrier.
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