what was your first turntable / setup?
I had one really crummy Numark or Gemini belt-driven turntable that I ordered from a catalog and I paired it with my parents’ turntable from the house. You couldn’t backcue the regular turntable but at least you could scratch on the belt-driven one. I had one of those 99-dollar Numark mixers. The faders wore out quickly but it was actually a decent mixer for the price. I bought a second crap turntable at some point so my dad could have his back.
did you get the 1200(s) from a store? how did you get the money to pay for the 1200(s)?
I got a pair of them on ebay in 2001. Still have the same pair. I think they cost $600 for the pair – they have European power supply, but they came with North American adaptors so it’s all good. I used to work odd jobs in high school. I made sandwiches at a deli for a while, coached at a soccer camp for kids and I also used to write up the line scores to high school and local college sports in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sports section for like 30 bucks a night one or two nights a week.
how did you feel when you got your first technics turntable(s)?
I was super geeked. Up until that point, I had these awful turntables with no torque. I had a half dozen friends in high school who had Techs (Skinny Friedman was one of em), and I would be at their houses all the time playing records with them because playing on Techs was 9 zillion times better. Most of my records just lived at other peoples’ houses because they had better turntables.
what is your favorite feature or aspect of the technics turntable?
Since WWII, we’ve developed a disposable culture where pretty much everything is created with a plan for its obsolescence. Unlike most everything else, this piece of equipment has remained important and fundamentally unchanged. Essentially, the ideal product was created for this particular niche. Can you imagine Chevy putting out essentially the same car for 40 years?
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