Technics SL-1200G

Direct Drive Turntable System
SL-1200G

• Overview
• Features
• Specs
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Coreless Direct Drive Motor

Conventional analogue turntables have problems with degradation in sound quality caused by factors such as minute speed vibration during rotation and rotation irregularity called “cogging.” In the SL-1200G, the use of a newly developed coreless direct-drive motor with no iron core eliminates cogging. Also, the twin-rotor construction reduces the bearing load while maintaining high torque and also reduces minute vibration during rotation. These factors enable reproduction of the warm, exquisitely detailed sound etched on analogue records.

High-precision Motor Control Technology

The application of motor control technology developed for Blu-ray devices and switching the drive mode depending on the operational status of the motor achieve a high-starting torque and high-speed stability.

Three-layered Turntable Platter

The turntable has a three-layered construction with a rigidly combined brass and aluminium die-cast platter. With a deadening rubber covering its entire rear surface to eliminate unnecessary resonance, thereby achieving high rigidity and vibration damping. This delivers smooth rotational stability and inertial mass surpassing the SP-10MK2, the direct-drive turntable standard used by broadcast stations worldwide, as well as having more than twice the inertial mass of the SL-1200MK5.

High-level Balance Adjustment

When the weight distribution of the turntable is uneven, excess vibration or noise occurs during rotation, which causes degradation in sound quality. Therefore, the balance of the turntable is adjusted at the factory by using specialized high-precision balance adjustment equipment for each and every item after the turntable is assembled. Turntables that have undergone adjustment are labelled with a sticker reading “BALANCED” to indicate that adjustment has been done.

Balance Adjuster

“BALANCED” sticker indicating balance adjustment completed

Exhaustive measurement performed to examine whether the surface deflection of the platter is within limits

High-sensitive Tonearm

The tonearm employs lightweight magnesium which has a high damping effect, with cold drawing improving the characteristics of the material and achieving the high-precision required. In addition, high initial-motion sensitivity is attained by employing the traditional Technics gimbal suspension construction with horizontal rotation axis and the vertical rotation axis intersecting at a single central point, as well as high-precision bearings using a cut-processed housing.

High-precision Bearings

Supplied auxiliary weights support a wide variety of cartridges

Four-layered Cabinet Construction

A hairline-processed, 10-mm-thick top panel of immaculate aluminium has been added to the previous three-layered construction of aluminium die-cast, BMC, and heavyweight-class rubber on the SL-1200MK5. This four-layered construction combines high rigidity with a high-quality finish and feel.

High-quality Terminals

The use of brass-milled, gold-plated phono terminals and ground terminals prevent degradation in sound quality while enabling the easy attaching and detaching of cables. Also the use of metal shielding construction inside the case reduces the effects of external noise.

Brass-milled PHONO Output Terminals

AC Input Terminals (Detectable Input)

SL-1200G
Direct Drive Turntable System

Turntable section

Type Direct Drive Manual Turntable Turntable Speeds 33-1/3, 45 and 78 rpm Adjust Range ±8 %, ±16 % Starting Torque 3.3 kg-cm Build-up Characteristics 0.7 s. from Standstill to 33-1/3 rpm Wow And Flutter 0.025 % W.R.M.S. (JIS C5521) Rumble 78 dB (IEC 98A weighted) Turntable Platter Brass and aluminium die-cast combined
Diameter: 332mm
Weight: Approx. 3.6 kg (including a rubber mat)

Tonearm Section

Type Universal Static Balance Effective Length 230 mm Overhang 15 mm Tracking Error Angle Within 2° 32′(at the outer groove of 30 cm (12″”) record)
Within 0° 32′(at the inner groove of 30 cm (12″”) record) Offset Angle 22° Arm-height Adjustment Range 0 – 6 mm Stylus Pressure Adjustment Range 0 – 4 g (direct reading) Head Shell Weight Approx. 7.6 g Applicable Cartridge Weight Range (Without the auxiliary weight)
5.6 to 12.0 g
14.3 to 20.7 g (including the head shell)
(With small auxiliary weight)
10.0 to 16.4 g
18.7 to 25.1 g (including the head shell)
(With large auxiliary weight)
14.3 to 19.8 g
23.0 to 28.5 g (including headshell) Cartridge Mounting Dimension JIS 12.7 mm Interval Head Shell Terminal Lug 1.2 mm φ 4-pin Terminal Lug

Terminals

Audio Output PHONO (Pin Jack), EARTH TERMINAL

General

Power Supply AC 110 – 240 V, 50 / 60 Hz Power Consumption 14 W Approx. 0.2 W (standby) Dimensions (W x H x D) 453 x 173 x 372 mm Weight Approx. 18 kg Accessories Turntable, Turntable Mat, Dust Cover, EP Record Adaptor, Balace Weight, Auxiliary Weight Small, Auxiliary Weight Big, Head Shell, Overhang Gauge, Screw Set for Cartridge, PHONO Cable, PHONO Earth Lead, AC Mains Lead, Screw Set for Turntable, Owner’s Manual

Ballroom Glitz Vjuan Allure

Ballroom glitz

Performers battled, catwalked, and vogued in a historic ball held in April at the George Peabody Library, a grand venue for an event that honored the nearly century-old tradition of the ballroom community as a countercultural provocation of fashion, dance, performance, and politics

By Bret McCabe / Published Oct 14

The gown designed and made by the House of Revlon looks like something transported from both the future and the past. Pages from books are layered onto a tiered hoop skirt, cinched at the waist by a bodice of yellow pencils. More book pages form a ruffled V-neckline and cascade down into billowing pagoda sleeves. When strutted up and down a catwalk, it elegantly shimmies and cuts the kind of stunning silhouette that Jean Paul Gaultier would covet.

The House of Revlon was one of many families from the ballroom community—a nearly century-old countercultural provocation of fashion, dance, performance, and politics created by LGBTQ people of color in New York City—that participated in a ball held at the George Peabody Library in April. Performers from up and down the East Coast came to Baltimore to compete in categories designed specifically for the event. Icon Jack Mizrahi, a New York-based producer and ballroom historian, and Baltimore’s Trebra Blahnik served as the fast-talking, shade-throwing masters of ceremonies. DJ Vjuan Allure St. Laurent filled the night with body moving sounds. The result was an extravagantly engaging evening, and a 10-minute documentary featurette about the ball that debuted online in late September.

The ball and documentary are but two outcomes of the ongoing Peabody Ballroom Experience, a collaboration between the Peabody Library and Baltimore’s ballroom community. Developed by Joseph Plaster, curator in public humanities for the Sheridan Libraries and an assistant research scholar at the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, the Peabody Ballroom Experience has included vogue dance workshops for Peabody students, film screenings, and an oral history project with members of the local ballroom community. The project and Plaster’s position are funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Plaster moved to Baltimore in 2018 specifically to conduct research using the collections housed in the university’s museums and libraries and interpret them in ways that bring to light the histories of marginalized communities, he says.

“I decided to partner with artists in the ballroom community to interpret the Peabody Library collections. It seemed like an incongruous match at first,” he says. “Most of the library books were acquired by Baltimore’s white male elite in the late 1800s and reflect their interests and prejudices. But one of the most powerful things about ballroom culture is its ability to adopt elements of mainstream culture—even those elements that are built on unjust privilege—and reinterpret them as something beautiful and life-affirming for the queer people of color who make up the community.”

The Peabody Ballroom Experience is an innovative and intimate approach to creating a dialogue between an anchor institution such as Johns Hopkins and a local creative population that has existed mostly below mainstream culture’s radar. As Plaster notes in his essay for the Radical History Review‘s blog, titled Black Queer Performance in Baltimore’s “Cathedral of Books”: the Peabody Ballroom Experience envisioned an “exchange of knowledge between Johns Hopkins and Baltimore’s ballroom community, bringing together faculty, students, and ballroom leaders as partners in education.” The approach, he adds, recognizes “performance as a repository for history and knowledge, expanding what ‘public history’ can look and feel like.”

It’s a process that involves patient, sometimes difficult conversations. Plaster started the project with a few members of the ballroom community, who invited others to join.

“When I came to my first meeting, there were no black trans women—and they typically are who’s in the ballroom scene in Baltimore and who actually started ballroom,” says Londyn Smith de Richelieu, a member of the advisory board that guides the project’s collaborations and events. Smith de Richelieu is an activist who works for BeSure Baltimore, a program operated by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Baltimore Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to guide HIV prevention, counseling, and testing services in the city. And she wanted to make sure black trans voices were included in the project. “I found that problematic and I mentioned it,” she says. “And I stayed, in part, because I realized that my voice as a part of that community would be imperative to the success of this project.”

Smith De Richelieu also works to raise awareness about not only who gets to speak for ballroom culture, but who gains from its mainstream monetization. As ballroom has gradually slipped into the mainstream thanks in part to Jennie Livingston’s cult 1990 film Paris is Burning, Madonna’s 1990 song and video “Vogue,” and, more recently, FX’s gripping TV drama Pose, ballroom performers are transforming from subjects to muses, and more recently, to creative producers. As Mizrahi, an on-set Pose consultant, told Billboard magazine in 2018: “When I first heard about the show, I thought, ‘Somebody has to call me.’ Not to be cocky, but if you’re having a conversation about ballroom, for the last 25 years I’ve been the most involved person pushing forward for the community.”

Image caption: A dancer performs on the catwalk at the Peabody Ballroom Experience

Image credit: Gerard Gaskin

“Ballroom is having a mainstream moment,” Plaster says, noting other cultural touchstones such as the Viceland show My House, and the first vogue battle at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which took place in June. “One of the dangers of mainstreaming is that outsiders can co-opt and appropriate the culture, often for their own financial gain. One of the first things I did when I launched the project was create an advisory group of ballroom leaders to organize an event that was by ballroom, for ballroom.”

The Peabody Ballroom Experience advisory board includes people spanning the Johns Hopkins and ballroom communities, including Plaster; Smith de Richelieu; Iconic Sebastian Escada; Legendary Mother Marco Blahnik, of the House of Manolo Blahnik; Legendary Enrique St. Laurent; Father Keith Ebony Holt, of the House of Ebony; Gabrielle Dean, curator of rare books and manuscripts at Johns Hopkins; Paul Espinosa, curator of the George Peabody Library; MICA curator George Ciscle; and Madison Moore, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. In consultation with the board, Plaster reached out to local vogue dancer Marquis Revlon to lead the vogue workshops with Peabody dance students and to photographer Gerard Gaskin, who shot the photo book Legendary: Inside the House Ballroom Scene, to document the ball itself. He then reached out to film students in the Johns Hopkins MA in Film and Media program to work on the documentary.

Also see

Documentary ‘Kiki’ highlights the ballroom scene in Baltimore

/ The Johns Hopkins News-Letter

Guide to the Ballroom Scene

/ Red Bull Music Academy

‘Paris Is Burning’ Goes Global

/ The New York Times

The board also consulted the archives of the George Peabody Library to brainstorm competition categories for the ball, impressively combining themes from great books with ballroom’s bottomless well of creativity. One category, called “Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover,” was inspired by the combination of the artistry of fore-edge books and the popular ballroom category called Face. “Paul [Espinosa] showed me one of the fore-edge books and it looked like a regular book,” performer Keith Ebony says. “And when he pressed the pages together it became a beautiful illustration. And I said, That’s like Face—you become completely concealed. No one sees the beauty that you’re hiding underneath. And then you take off the veil and it’s a beautiful masterpiece, just like the book.”

Image credit: Gerard Gaskin

Ebony is a veteran in Baltimore’s ballroom community, and has organized large ballroom events at the Smithsonian. He’s also organized events that combine ballroom with public outreach because he believes the art form serves a social role.

“Honestly, I was so afraid of ballroom at first,” Ebony says. “It scared me because I didn’t want people to know I was gay. But I had a lot of friends who were involved, and then I met my parents, and the rest is history. Ballroom definitely helped me to accept myself and my sexuality, I will say that.” “It was monumental for us to be in that space—to have black and brown people in this space, and black and brown people teaching voguing to Peabody students and communities who didn’t know about ballroom was historic.” Londyn Smith de Richelieu

The Peabody Ballroom Experience packed about 350 people into the Peabody library for a few hours of catwalking, vogueing, arm control, hand performance, and dips, where a performer controls a backward fall to the ground with a single bent leg. It’s a visually spectacular, anatomy-defying move, and audience members cheered those who dared it by raising a hand into the air and bringing in down in time with the dip itself. Contestants in the 12 categories drew their wardrobe and movement inspirations from the library holdings, such as the opulent imagery in an illustrated 1828 copy of Portraits Of Illustrious Personages Of The Court Of Henry VIII or the motions captured by photographer Edweard Muybridge in his 1887 book Animal Locomotion. Map imagery was turned into bodysuits; books into towering headpieces. And an array of devilish costumes and acrobatic movements competed in the final category, “Battle of Heaven and Hell,” inspired by John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost.

Plaster recently started planning for the second ball, scheduled for April 2020. The ballroom community is already looking forward to the next one.

“After the event, that night people were telling me, ‘I can’t wait for the next one,'” Ebony says with a laugh. “And I’m like, ‘We just finished this one.'”

The event was more than just an opportunity for the Baltimore ballroom community to partner with America’s first research university—it was a rare chance for a marginalized community to occupy a grand, historic site in the city. In recent years a number of clubs and venues that used to host local balls have closed or been displaced, and ball organizers have sought other venues further out from the city center. And place has been an important factor since the art form’s beginnings.

“When people think about ballroom, New York City always overshadows everything,” Ebony continues. “The beautiful thing about this experience is that you have another scene about three and a half hours from New York that is thriving, that has its history, its own legends, its own icons, its own venues. New York is of course the mecca of the ballroom scene, but it is good to know that other places around the country are doing it, too. Ballroom started out as an underground community, and the fact that we are in places like Peabody means our art form is not hidden anymore.”

Adds Smith de Richelieu: “It was monumental for us to be in that space—to have black and brown people in this space, and black and brown people teaching voguing to Peabody students and communities who didn’t know about ballroom was historic.”

The Martinez Brothers Fabric presents includes Sir Lord Comixx

The Martinez Brothers will mix the next instalment of fabric presents.

Following Bonobo‘s and Kölsch‘s entries in the recently revamped series, the New York duo’s mix spans 23 tracks—including three exclusive cuts by the duo—over 75 minutes. Louie Vega, Kai Alce, Funky People, Varhat,Sangre Voss and more feature on the tracklist.

The mix is out on September 27th via fabric’s in-house label. Listen to clips on fabric’s website.

In July, The Martinez Brothers released a mixtape of edits called Space Jams Vol. 1.

Tracklist
01. Tom Flynn – The Future feat. Mjojo & Bongani
02. Varhat – Chhulub (Cabanne Remix)
03. Frak – Bitter Drop
04. Blaze feat. Piano Man – #6 Hubert St (Klubhead Style)
05. Mahony & Floog – Nu Mai
06. The Martinez Brothers – Jam Joint
07. Funky People – Funky People feat. Cassio Ware (Klubhead Vocal)
08. Sangre Voss – One Bad Mango
09. The Bayara Citizens – Mafungo (Joe’s Forest Version)
10. Roots Orchestra – Kalabuta
11. Kai Alce – Power Thru Pt 3 feat. Azulu Phantom (Don’t Turn On The Lights) (Martinez Brothers Edit)
12. Big Strick – Spontaneous Combustion
13. Glen Lewis – Life Everlasting feat. Mjojo & Bongani (Dennis Ferrer’s Passion Of C Dub)
14. Love Letters – Ducue (Xtended Dick Dub)
15. Dan Curtin – Echozeichen
16. Brinton Mckay – Real Cool (Abe Duque Remix)
17. The Martinez Brothers – Mistakes
18. Trevor Rockcliffe – Visions Of You feat. Blake Baxter (Carl Cox Remix)
19. Paul Johnson – House Illusion
20. Party Crashers – Come And Get It
21. Sir Lord Commix – Chicago Jazz
22. K. Alexi Shelby – Spanish Fly
23. Louie Vega & The Martinez Brothers – Let It Go (TMB Alternate Version)

fabric will release fabric presents The Martinez Brothers on September 27th, 2019.

Radio Slave & Patrick Mason in The Lab LDN MixMag

The Lab LDN is Mixmag and Coors Light’s weekly live stream, powered by Void Acoustics, where we showcase the finest DJs direct from our world famous office party.

This Friday, November 29, we welcome two titans of the Berlin club scene as Radio Slave & Patrick Mason throw it down as SRVD. Get guestlist here.

The pair first met inside Panorama Bar, and since 2018 have been collaborating on weighty sets and productions that ignite dancefloors as SRVD.

Three releases have arrived via Rekids, merging Patrick Mason’s club kid energy with Radio Slave’s floor-focused expertise into hot ‘n’ heavy bangers. Standout sets at the likes of Pacha’s Transmoderna, Pornceptual and the beloved Berlin spot where they met have further marked out SRVD as a powerful force in clubland.

Catch the live stream from 5pm GMT this Friday, November 29. Tune in live over on our Facebook page and re-watch later on MixmagTV

Sir Lord Comixx joins Radio Slave as special guest.

SRVD play Afterlife at Printworks on November 30

For 2019, The Lab LDN will also shine a light on talented visual artists. This week’s visuals come from Dan Tombs for 2MS Visuals, check 2MS.studio and 2MS on Instagram