Technics SL-1200MK2-E SER.NO. GE5CS47307

At your risk.


Amazing Quartz direct drive turntable system.


Remembering fondly DJing with 2 of them at school parties with John (Yiannis) renting them from Vasillis at Monastiraki in Athens.


Amazing quality to detail.
There is no wonder it is still being made?
Is it the most successful turntable of all time?


Recently cleaning (an older addition to the Pleides lab) for hours.
And aligning azimuth after having lightly sprayed Kontakt 40 long time ago to loosen the tiny screws.
Watching the relevant YouTube video.
It had been decided to loosen the tiny screws with a very small and short screwdriver bought ages ago from Katoumas store.
One does not even need to remove the platter in order to make space for the screwdriver. Just removing the felt mat and taking advantage of the 2 large handling holes on the plattter. It has to be done very carefully and the information on this post may be wrong.
When the tone arm was set at the rest position (parallel to platter?) a workshop right angle free standing metal triangle was used for alignment.


Then the Stanton (680?, missing sticker) cartridge shell, cartridge, cartridge cables, cable pins had been cleaned for hours.


Then cartridge had been aligned with a nice strong and beautiful paper Ortofon alignment protractor.


Other things such are parallel adjustment of tonearm to platter had been done long time ago.


Then tracking force was set at 1.7g. Anti scatting too.


Then it was connected.


Signal path:


Great Expectations - Tasmin Archer (German LP print) - Stanton (680?) with imitation elliptical stylus - Technics SL-1200 MK2 - Realistic Disco mixer (the one with lower headphone volume, see previous posts) - Sennheiser HD580


Breathtaking amazing sound quality.
So nice and smooth sound, so extended treble and so nice bass and middle frequency information.
It makes you a better person just by listening.


There is some sibilant problem on Slepping Satellite at some points in time.
But the track overall sounds amazing.



Varispeed was used on the other tracks at say +4 in an attempt to make the other track vocals sound as fresh as Sleeping Satellite,
There was some success but still the magic vocal of Sleeping Satellite could not be matched.














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