TECHNICS SL-1300G Wired Recommends

This hyper-robust deck SL-1300G from Technics takes classic design to the audiophile tier.

Technics doesn’t just make a turntable, it makes the turntable. For decades, there hasn’t been a DJ worth their salt, or a venue worth its alcohol license, that doesn’t rely on Technics SL-1200 turntables to get the party started and keep the party going, night after night.

Tricks of the Trade
Smooth, accurate rotation, goes the thinking, leads to smooth, accurate sound. By deleting the motor’s iron core, rotational instability (or cogging, as it’s more generally known) can be reduced to virtually nothing. For the SL-1300G, it’s a twin-rotor design that minimizes rotational vibration and decreases the load on the bearings at the same time, and it uses the Delta Sigma (ΔΣ) motor control software and drive system first seen in last year’s SL-1200GR2. Pulse width modulation control further reduces even the most minor rotational inaccuracies, along with any errors in the drive signal.
Technics has gone further still. A low-noise switching circuit renders the more commonplace transformer power supply superfluous, which consequently makes the requirement for those vibration-suppressing technologies transformers tend to require superfluous. Any residual noise generated by this transformerless power supply is targeted by “current injection” technology that generates inverse phase current to eliminate it. This, suggests Technics, is much more effective than the more usual “regulator” alternative.

Great Sound
Both in terms of the way it goes about things on a sonic level and the sort of music it’s comfortable dealing with, the SL-1300G has what sporty types like to refer to as “an all-court game.” It doesn’t matter if you ask it to play a copy of Orff’s “Carmina Burana” as performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, Chorus, and Boys Choir under Michael Tilson Thomas or a disc of James Holden’s Imagine This is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities, it’s all the same to the Technics. In every circumstance it’s a brilliantly poised, endlessly musical, profoundly analytical, and uncomplicatedly entertaining listen.
On the analysis side, the SL-1300G is approaching forensic. At every point of the frequency range it can identify and contextualize even the most transient, fleeting, and/or minor occurrences in a recording, give them appropriate weighting, and position them confidently on its large and spacious soundstage. Even where the most negligible harmonic variations in a voice or instrument are concerned, the Technics pounces on them like its life depended on it. This is not at the expense of the overall picture, but when you get up close to it, you find it’s alive with the fine details that make for a convincing and coherent whole.
And where entertainment is concerned, this turntable is a match for any alternative at the price. The low frequencies it generates are deep and substantial, opulently textured, and controlled with such positivity at the moment of attack that the SL-1300G describes rhythms with absolute certainty.
One of the reasons the vinyl format is so prized is the naturalistic way it can have with tempo, rhythm, and timing when it’s properly implemented, and this Technics has this talent in abundance. It’s just as accomplished through the middle of the frequency range. Seldom has a vocalist sounded more direct, more alive with character and attitude, than when it’s being served to your ears by this turntable.
Dynamic headroom is considerable, which is just as well when you consider the shifts in volume, intensity, and attack the Orff piece modulates through. From hushed whisper to all-out orchestral assault is a mighty distance when the Technics is describing it, and it makes for a visceral presentation. But it’s not a forceful listen simply for the sake of it; the SL-1300G creates a genuine sensation of performance, of unity and togetherness, that’s by no means a given on high-end decks. Even when a recording is as complex and as full of individual elements as this one, this record player ties it all together with almost casual authority.
- Simon Lucas, Wired, October 31, 2024

Technics SL-1300G
Wired