Review: Technics SL-1300G Turntable

Technics doesn’t just make a turntable, it makes the turntable. For decades, there hasn’t been a DJ worth their salt, or a venue worth its alcohol license, that doesn’t rely on Technics SL-1200 turntables to get the party started and keep the party going, night after night.

But ever since its rebirth in 2014 following its inexplicable termination by parent company Panasonic in 2010, Technics has been on a mission to demonstrate that there’s more to the brand than now-discontinued DJ decks. It would like to establish itself as a manufacturer of high-end high-fidelity stereo equipment that deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as those long-established audiophile brands.

The latest product designed to enhance its reputation for elite-level equipment is—you guessed it—a version of its record player, the SL-1300G. Yes, it ticks quite a few of the “Technics turntable” design boxes established decades ago, but this is not a turntable to be flung in the back of a van and hauled from gig to gig ad infinitum. This is a premium item, made of premium materials, and well worth the premium price tag that’s attached to it. Or, at least, that’s what Technics hopes.

Photograph: Simon Lucas

The New SL

There certainly seems to be some justification of the asking price if you judge the SL-1300G purely in terms of heft. This is a substantial 29 pounds, and it’s made from appropriately luxurious and tactile materials. From its very robust, extremely pliant and thoroughly engineered silicone rubber insulators (that’s “feet” to the likes of you and I) to its clear Perspex dust cover, the SL-1300G is 6.8 x 17.8 x 14.7 inches of uncompromised and uncompromising engineering.

A full 8 pounds is accounted for by the platter. It’s a three-layer monster, made from aluminum with a hefty slice of brass across the top and an even heftier quantity of vibration-deadening rubber across the bottom. It’s highly rigid, rejects resonance like nobody’s business, and guarantees smooth rotational stability and plenty of inertial mass.

It sits on a chassis built from bulk molding compound with a layer of die-cast aluminum across the top, and it’s turned by a motor that’s had an awful lot of attention paid to it. It’s a motor based on the "coreless" direct drive principles Technics first introduced in 2016.

Photograph: Simon Lucas

Tricks of the Trade

Smooth, accurate rotation, goes the thinking, leads to smooth, accurate sound. By deleting the motor’s iron core, rotational instability (or cogging, as it’s more generally known) can be reduced to virtually nothing. For the SL-1300G, it’s a twin-rotor design that minimizes rotational vibration and decreases the load on the bearings at the same time, and it uses the Delta Sigma (ΔΣ) motor control software and drive system first seen in last year’s SL-1200GR2. Pulse width modulation control further reduces even the most minor rotational inaccuracies, along with any errors in the drive signal.

Technics has gone further still. A low-noise switching circuit renders the more commonplace transformer power supply superfluous, which consequently makes the requirement for those vibration-suppressing technologies transformers tend to require superfluous. Any residual noise generated by this transformerless power supply is targeted by “current injection” technology that generates inverse phase current to eliminate it. This, suggests Technics, is much more effective than the more usual “regulator” alternative.

Photograph: Simon Lucas

The SL-1300G arrives fitted with a lightweight, rigid aluminum pipe tonearm. It’s 9 inches long, and is the standard static-balance S-shape Technics has long since preferred. It uses gimbal suspension and high-precision bearings, and includes a multistage counterweight, a user-adjustable anti-skate mechanism, a lift, and a tonearm lock.

The RCA sockets you’ll use to connect your SL-1300G to an amplifier are a) gold-plated, and b) buried deep underneath the body of the deck. It seems rather tightfisted of Technics to supply a expensive, lavishly specified record player like this with the sort of humdrum, run-of-the-mill stereo interconnects that your $50 CD player came with, but at least there are connections there in the box, along with a lead for mains power. What you won't find is a cartridge and this, I’d suggest, is approaching “unforgivable” as an omission.

Photograph: Simon Lucas

No Cartridge

For this money, not only do I expect the manufacturer to have researched and identified the cartridge it thinks most appropriate for use with its record player, but to have prefitted it to its headshell for my convenience. As it stands, you’re looking at around $500 (minimum) for a cartridge capable of doing the SL-1300G justice, and who knows how long fitting and balancing it would take—cartridge fitment is a notoriously tricky feat of manual labor that no one looks forward to.

I honestly think it would better serve its customers if Technics supplied and fitted a decent cartridge and then added the cost to the asking price. I settled on a Goldring Erioica LX and Clearaudio Aurum Classics, and compared the turntable to a Clearaudio Emotion SE and Cambridge Audio Alva TT v2.

As far as the sound of the Technics SL-1300G is concerned, there’s really only one aspect in which it’s not straightforwardly excellent: This is not an inexpensive turntable and it gets pricier still by the time it’s actually ready to function. Yet the way it performs goes an awfully long way toward making the outlay seem fair enough.

Great Sound

Both in terms of the way it goes about things on a sonic level and the sort of music it’s comfortable dealing with, the SL-1300G has what sporty types like to refer to as “an all-court game.” It doesn’t matter if you ask it to play a copy of Orff’s “Carmina Burana” as performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, Chorus, and Boys Choir under Michael Tilson Thomas or a disc of James Holden’s Imagine This is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities, it’s all the same to the Technics. In every circumstance it’s a brilliantly poised, endlessly musical, profoundly analytical, and uncomplicatedly entertaining listen.

On the analysis side, the SL-1300G is approaching forensic. At every point of the frequency range it can identify and contextualize even the most transient, fleeting, and/or minor occurrences in a recording, give them appropriate weighting, and position them confidently on its large and spacious soundstage. Even where the most negligible harmonic variations in a voice or instrument are concerned, the Technics pounces on them like its life depended on it. This is not at the expense of the overall picture, but when you get up close to it, you find it’s alive with the fine details that make for a convincing and coherent whole.

Photograph: Simon Lucas

And where entertainment is concerned, this turntable is a match for any alternative at the price. The low frequencies it generates are deep and substantial, opulently textured, and controlled with such positivity at the moment of attack that the SL-1300G describes rhythms with absolute certainty.

One of the reasons the vinyl format is so prized is the naturalistic way it can have with tempo, rhythm, and timing when it’s properly implemented, and this Technics has this talent in abundance. It’s just as accomplished through the middle of the frequency range. Seldom has a vocalist sounded more direct, more alive with character and attitude, than when it’s being served to your ears by this turntable.

Photograph: Simon Lucas

Dynamic headroom is considerable, which is just as well when you consider the shifts in volume, intensity, and attack the Orff piece modulates through. From hushed whisper to all-out orchestral assault is a mighty distance when the Technics is describing it, and it makes for a visceral presentation. But it’s not a forceful listen simply for the sake of it; the SL-1300G creates a genuine sensation of performance, of unity and togetherness, that’s by no means a given on high-end decks. Even when a recording is as complex and as full of individual elements as this one, this record player ties it all together with almost casual authority.

Only the top of the frequency range gives any cause for concern. In a balanced and sympathetic system, the SL-1300G creates high-end presence that’s just as detailed, just as varied, and just as convincing as everything going on beneath it, but there’s no denying it attacks with gusto. In an ill-sorted or unsympathetic system (which means a system that’s just as avid where treble sounds are concerned), it can get too bright.

So there are two things you need to pay reasonably close attention to: the system you’re slotting the SL-1300G into, and the cartridge you’re researching, paying for and fitting to its headshell. Get those two elements right and you’ll have a turntable that’s ready to reward you for years to come.