The SL-1300G arrives fitted with a light-weight, inflexible aluminum pipe tonearm. It’s 9 inches lengthy, and is the usual static-balance S-shape Technics has lengthy since most popular. It makes use of gimbal suspension and high-precision bearings, and features a multistage counterweight, a user-adjustable anti-skate mechanism, a elevate, and a tonearm lock.
The RCA sockets you’ll use to attach your SL-1300G to an amplifier are a) gold-plated, and b) buried deep beneath the physique of the deck. It appears fairly tightfisted of Technics to provide a costly, lavishly specified file participant like this with the kind of humdrum, run-of-the-mill stereo interconnects that your $50 CD participant got here with, however at the very least there are connections there within the field, together with a lead for mains energy. What you will not discover is a cartridge and this, I’d counsel, is approaching “unforgivable” as an omission.
No Cartridge
For this cash, not solely do I count on the producer to have researched and recognized the cartridge it thinks most acceptable to be used with its file participant, however to have prefitted it to its headshell for my comfort. Because it stands, you’re taking a look at round $500 (minimal) for a cartridge able to doing the SL-1300G justice, and who is aware of how lengthy becoming and balancing it will take—cartridge fitment is a notoriously difficult feat of handbook labor that nobody appears ahead to. I truthfully assume it will higher serve its prospects if Technics equipped and fitted a good cartridge after which added the fee to the asking value.
Nonetheless, so far as the sound of the Technics SL-1300G is anxious, there’s actually just one facet wherein it’s not straightforwardly glorious. This isn’t an affordable turntable and it will get pricier nonetheless by the point it’s truly able to operate, however the way in which it performs goes an awfully good distance towards making the outlay appear honest sufficient.
Nice Sound
Each by way of the way in which it goes about issues on a sonic stage and the kind of music it’s snug coping with, the SL-1300G has what sporty sorts prefer to discuss with as “an all-court sport.” It doesn’t matter if you happen to ask it to play a duplicate of Orff’s “Carmina Burana” as carried out by the Cleveland Orchestra, Refrain, and Boys Choir below Michael Tilson Thomas or a disc of James Holden’s Think about It is a Excessive Dimensional House of All Potentialities, it’s all the identical to the Technics. In each circumstance it’s a brilliantly poised, endlessly musical, profoundly analytical, and uncomplicatedly entertaining hear.
On the evaluation facet, the SL-1300G is approaching forensic. At each level of the frequency vary it could determine and contextualize even essentially the most transient, fleeting, and/or minor occurrences in a recording, give them acceptable weighting, and place them confidently on its giant and spacious soundstage. Even the place essentially the most negligible harmonic variations in a voice or instrument are involved, the Technics pounces on them like its life relied on it. This isn’t on the expense of the general image, however if you rise up near it, you discover it’s alive with the fantastic particulars that make for a convincing and coherent entire.