technics all the way, theyre industry standerd

Any venue worth its salt will have a pair of technics (they are the most ‘rider friendly’ – visiting DJs will often specify technics in their contract), so if you plan to play out at all it makes sense to get the same so you’re not faced with unfamiliar equipment in a club. Belt drive decks are like mixing on your Dad’s hifi and are a waste of space. If you don’t want to splash out on technics just yet tho there are plenty of cheaper direct drive decks that will do the job ok – I’ve got a pair of old Numark TT100s gathering dust at my parents house that have served me pretty well over the years (fucking hell, just realised it was 10 years ago when I bought them now – feels like yesterday!).

I don’t think the second hand price will actually rise all that much TBH even though they are no longer made.

They aren’t estoteric enough to attract the big time elderly hi fi anoraks (if anything those sort of folk would associate a 1210 with chavs, drugs, guns and crime) – a pair of them was often the sort of thing bought “on the side” by a middle level drugs dealer with the profits from drugs sales…

There is competition from other makes and loads of venues closing down and DJ’s selling up kit either due to digital or getting older and leaving the industry (for instance many people from their 20s onwards find themselves having to clear out their studio due to the arrival of that expensive high-maintenance creature known as a baby) and vinyl is slowly losing ground in the commercial nightlife pro-audio – remember also that electronic dance music based events are increasingly only licensed in certain areas of bigger cities – many English towns outside the metropolitan areas especially down South now do not and will not tolerate any other music events than bands or townie DJ’s who play commercial pop on CDJs

So there must be plenty still on the second hand market -they have after all been made for nearly as long as I have been around.

@DaftFader 452616 wrote:

This is true, but after x amount of time, even with the reputation of techniques they will all start to get dmged, broken. This might not be for another 10-20 years tho tbf and by then vinyl will probably of been totaly phazed out.

Panasonic did warn that one reason they stopped making them was that the parts were getting hard to find.

By that time though if they endure as a “vintage” hi fi you will have old men in sheds/workshops making the parts like what happens with a lot of the old valve kit – and it will be only these old men (TBH probably us lot!) collecting this kind of equipment anyway.

Vinyl had already been phased out for broadcast purposes over 10 years ago. When I did a legal RSL station all the normal tunes were on server and PC screen and my mates had to bring in their own decks and mixer, I literally had to take apart the acoustic panels from the newsroom (where the decks were set up) to get at the XLRs which fed the newsroom mic mixer into the main one and then get our feed into there – and then restore this when the broadcast was over.

This also had to be done very carefully so I didn’t kill the main newsroom mixer as because of some Ofcom rule we had to transmit news at every hour and this had the satellite audio with the news on it, which was Spectrum 558 rather than a clean feed. (there wasn’t any broadband back then so no internet feed and it would be 3-5 seconds out anyway due to codec delays!) So the moment the news finished you had to fade this out or you’d be transmitting bhangra over your local programme content. You have about a second to do this.

For years afterward, even to this day if someone is listening to normal radio and I hear the words “Independent Radio News” (which is the signal for the end of the bulletin) I immediately look up and get ready to run to a mixing desk..

I doubt vinyl will be phased out any time soon, they are already set to outlast CDs by a long shot, and look how long they’ve been around

Just cant beat an analogue pressing, I know plenty of people who don’t even DJ who still collect vinyl for the sound quality and collectability of them

got a pair of 1210 mk2s when i started off, still got em today and still in fine working order. Also got a pair of Pioneer cdj 800s fine for a home setup.

1210 mk2’s. Had mine over 20 years and still going strong without a single problem. I actually started out on belt drives and played at a few parties with belt drive turntables in fact i have played on some of the worst turntables going (all-in-ones with pitch controls under the actual vinyl etc), but direct drives are the ones to go for.

those were around when I was a boy design is from many years before beat mixing became popular; those consoles originally had Garrard SP25 decks in them which were just 33/45 without varispeed. or BSR which weren’t quite as good quality (think of what British cars were like; I have a feeling they also got made in nearby factories). Those weren’t belt drive but had a complex arrangement of levers/rubber wheels and drove the rim of the turntable. A decent 1970s Garrard SP25 can sound OK but wouldn’t be the best for “disco” type work and the later belt drive models were’t as rugged!

I think the UK Citronic company (based in Melksham, not even 100% sure where that is, could be near Swindon) did fold some years ago ; the brand is now used to rebadge various Chinese kit (which actually sounds far better than the British stuff from back in the day; most of the audio circuits are a mix of British and German designs)