Photo courtesy of Panasonic
Despite its ubiquitousness in the nightlife and DJ community, Technics (of the iconic Technics SL-1200) is not interested in courting the DJ community, reports the New York Times. Last year, Technics brought back the turntable to consumers."DJs are fine, too, but as a marketing target it's problematic," said Technics creative director Hiro Morishita to the newspaper. "We don't want to sell the 1200 as the best tool for DJing. The 1200 is the 1200." The company currently believes music recorded by live musicians demonstrates its best use.According to the report from the New York Times, Technics believed the SL-1200 did not have enough core customers to revive the brand. "It needed to reach wealthy, older audiophiles who would spend extravagantly on gear–not only the turntable, but also the amplifier, speakers and other equipment that the company markets alongside it," the newspaper said.The revived Technics SL-1200 currently retails for 330,000 yen or "about $2,800." That is around four times its earlier cost, reports the New York Times.Earlier last year, Technics CTO Tetsuya Itani explained the $4000 price tag for their revived SL-1200G turntable to What Hi-Fi?"Because the original 1210 turntables were manufactured for so many years, the manufacturing process had got to a very low cost," he said. "Now we need to invest in all the tools again, and the price now is much higher than the 1970s."