| Re: Buying a record player [message #87566 is a reply to message #87564] |
Mon, 26 March 2018 16:04   |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18686
Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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Record player and turntable are the same thing in this context. I've seen other kinds of "turntables" in other industries, but in audio, they're record players. Seems like people called 'em record players in the 1950s and 1960s, but more and more called them turntables after the 1970s, especially when used in a high-fidelity stereo. So "turntable" may be more of an "audiophile" word.
Anyway, as for the (Panasonic) Technics direct-drive tables, they were pretty popular in the 1970s and 1980s. But by the 1990s, CDs started becoming more popular and a lot of people stopped using vinyl. So most manufacturers stopped making turntables. The low-end and midrange products were first to go, and pretty soon even the high-end was pretty limited.
High-end gear is usually belt drive because it can be manufactured in small quantities, which is a necessity for high-end products. There were some very good direct-drive turntables, but they were mass-produced and so when turntables started slipping in popularity, most manufacturers stopped making them because the market couldn't support their required quantities for production runs.
One notable exception is the Technics SL-1200. It got a reprieve probably mostly because DJs used them. So that model has been in production since 1972, with only a brief pause between 2010 and 2016. It's ironic to me that Matsushita (Panasonic) maintained that product offering all the way up to 2010 - well over a decade after the "digital revolution" of audio - and then finally killed it off after analog and vinyl was making a huge comeback. But they quickly realized that and brought it back in 2016.
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