New TT -- $1k - $1500

You'd be amazed how a few low cost tweaks can elevate the SL1200's performance.

You're starting with an extremely precise, extremely rugged high torque design that would cost much more in the belt drive world to approach its speed accuracy, S/N ratio, and torque.

You could get the tonearm rewire and fluid damper, but with your budget you could instead get a Rega, Jelco, or SME armboard and one of those tonearms or one of the many Rega-compatible arms, such as Origin, Michell, etc.

Here's a thread that lists several Rega-compatible tonearms:

http://www.canuckaudiomart.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32321

ToneAudio mounted a used SME on an SL1200 and proclaimed it the standalone turntable value at around $2K.

If you take the leap to a REGA RP6 or even a RP3 with upgrades, you will find that the technics sounded THIN compared to the huge soudstage and fleshy images you will get with a REGA table and a EXACT/ Dynavector 10x5 cartridge. Any other table is moving sideways IMO.

Matt M

Even out of the box, I wouldn't characterize the SL12x0 series as "thin" unless there's a cartridge mismatch or bad setup. Murky, yes, but thin? I don't think so. The most significant sonic shortcomings of the SL12x0 TTs are minor and cheaply remedied. You just have to know whtat to do: Get an LpGear ZuPreme headshell, get the fluid damper for the tonearm, wrap the tonearm in teflon pipe thread tape, toss the stock footers and replace them with Vibrapod Cones and Isolators, get a better mat, and platform the table on a thick maple butcher block cutting board. Do these and the murkiness disappears and you find it an overachiever in inner detail.

I regularly visit a local Rega and British-heavy dealer and often hear the upper end Rega tables with great setups and excellent downstream electronics (e.g., Naim), and also the nicer Roksan tables. I have *never* returned home from one of those sessions to play my SL1210 M5G (with all the tweaks mentioned above) and wished I had a better rig or setup. "Thin" never came into the equation. The Technics trumped them in propulsive tempo and lack of stylus drag on heavily modulated passages (e.g., orchestral crescendos). I'll grant you that the soundstage is usually narrow, but the depth is excellent and imaging is pretty good.

johnnyb53:  You were one of the primary influences in me getting a technics when I posted about what I was looking for back 3 years ago.  I was just getting into vinyl and wanted to test the waters.

The technics is one of the many reasons I stuck with the hobby.  It has performed well.  Quite well.  But, it is a fiddly beast.  If I stick with the technics (I bought used), I'd feel most comfortable sending it off to KAB for work (mostly so he can give it a once over before I put a bunch of $ into it).  I am a DIYer at heart and I would love to mess around with it, but I think it might get in the way of me enjoying the music.  Plus, I can't find anyone in the SE Michigan area to work on it - most audio shops ... well ... have other suggestions for me.  Which is the main reason I'm looking for something new.

RP3 and RP6 are both good candidates...  I wish the RP6 was in the price range - that's a little out of the box for me at the moment.  RP3 might not be enough.