SL-1200MK7, the field manual

The five things on the SL-1200MK7 that change what happens next, if you are reading this in the booth. All five are explained in full further down this page.

Short answer. The SL-1200MK7 earth lead. Check it before you check anything else, and check it before you start swapping cables. Panasonic put it in one sentence in the manual: Be sure to connect the PHONO earth lead. Otherwise mains hum may occur. On this deck the earth lead is a separate part that screws to a terminal, which means it is a part that can be missing entirely, and a booth deck that has been moved a few times often is.

Why this happens. A phono cartridge puts out a few millivolts. Your mixer then applies something in the region of sixty decibels of gain to make that into a usable signal, and it applies that gain to everything on the input, including any mains-frequency noise the turntable chassis has picked up. The earth lead gives that noise a path out. Without it the chassis floats and the hum you hear is the mains being amplified alongside the record. It is not a fault in the deck, and no amount of turning things down will fix it, because the hum is being amplified by the same gain stage as the music.

Fix it now. Find the spade or ring terminal on the earth lead and get it onto the mixer's ground post, tightened properly rather than pushed on. Panasonic specify a Phillips screwdriver for the terminal on the deck itself, so if the hum survives, check that end too: a loose screw at the turntable is the same fault as a missing lead at the mixer. If the earth is definitely good and the hum is still there, Panasonic's second line is about proximity: Are there other appliances or their AC power supply cord near the stereo connection cable? Separate the appliances and their AC power supply cord from this unit. A power brick or an IEC cable lying across a phono lead is a real cause, and moving one is the whole fix.

Avoid it next time. Treat the earth lead as part of the deck, not as an optional extra, and check it during setup rather than during a set. Panasonic part number the lead separately, K4EY1YY00189, which means it can be replaced when it goes missing, and in a rental or club context it is worth knowing that before the gig rather than after.

Related: One channel has gone silent Connections, and what unplugs on this deck Panasonic's SL-1200MK7 owner's manual

Short answer. Work backwards along the SL-1200MK7's signal in the order that things actually fail: the headshell wires first, then the cartridge, then the phono lead. Three places, all mechanical, and none of them are anywhere on the top panel. This is the fault that sends DJs into a mixer's routing menu when the problem is four tiny wires the width of a hair.

Why this happens. The four headshell wires are the thinnest connection in the entire chain and they are worked every time somebody changes a cartridge or drops a headshell. Panasonic print the colour code in the SL-1200MK7's own manual, so you can see which side you have lost: Red is right positive, green is right negative, white is left positive and blue is left negative. A wire that has pulled off its pin, or a pin that is no longer gripping, silences exactly one channel and leaves the other one perfect. The cartridge itself can also lose one coil, which presents identically. And because this deck has a detachable phono lead, a lead that is not fully seated at the back of the deck is now on the list too, which was not true of an MK2.

Fix it now, and turn the sound down before you do. Panasonic put a hard rule in front of this whole repair: Turn the amplifier volume down or turn the amplifier off before fitting or removing the head shell. Damage to your speakers can occur if the head shell is moved while the volume is turned up. So the first move is at the mixer, not at the deck. Then swap the headshell for a known good one if you have a spare, because that single move tests the wires and the cartridge in one go. If the fault follows the headshell, it is the wires or the cartridge. If the fault stays with the deck, reseat the phono lead at the back, then move the whole lead to a different channel on the mixer to find out whether you are chasing a deck or chasing a mixer input. Nothing here needs tools, and a dirty contact is worth ruling out on the way past: Wipe the head shell terminals with a soft cloth and fit the head shell to the tone arm.

Avoid it next time. Carry a second headshell, already wired, already balanced. It is the single most useful spare for a vinyl set and it turns this fault from a set-ending problem into a ten second changeover. The phono lead is a part number, K4EY4YY00003, so a spare is a real option on this model in a way it is not on the older decks. Buy that part rather than a generic lead, because Panasonic are specific about it: Do not use any other AC power supply cord, PHONO cable and PHONO earth lead except the supplied one.

Related: There is a hum in the system Setting the arm up so it tracks

Short answer. Nine times out of ten this is the room and not the deck. Panasonic's placement instruction in the SL-1200MK7's own manual is the fix, and it is one line: Install the unit on a horizontal surface protected from vibrations. Keep this unit as far as possible from speakers. Only then start touching the arm.

Why this happens. A stylus in a groove is a microphone, and it cannot tell the difference between the vibration coming up through the plinth from a subwoofer and the vibration cut into the record. Below a certain frequency the deck, the mat, the platter and the arm start moving together with the room, and the stylus climbs out. That is acoustic feedback, and the giveaway is that it happens on the loud parts and stops when you pull the fader down. A deck that is not level adds a constant sideways pull on top of it, which is why an unlevel deck skips in one direction.

Fix it now. Get the deck off whatever is resonating. Anything that decouples the plinth from the booth surface helps, and moving the deck away from the front of a bass bin helps more. Confirm the deck sits level, and note that the feet are the adjustment: Raise the main unit to turn the insulators and adjust the height, clockwise to reduce it and anti-clockwise to increase it. There is a limit on how far: Do not turn the insulators too far. Doing so may cause them to come off or damage them. Check the counterweight has not crept and that the anti-skating matches the stylus pressure, which is Panasonic's own instruction: Turn the anti-skating control to adjust it to the same value as the stylus pressure control. That matching has a ceiling: For stylus pressures 3 g and above, adjust anti-skating control to "3". Raising tracking force is the last resort, not the first, and it must stay inside whatever your cartridge maker specifies.

Avoid it next time. Decide where the decks go before the room fills up, because after that nothing can be moved. This is judgement from working booths rather than a Panasonic specification, and it is worth saying plainly: booths built with the turntables directly on top of, or bolted to, the same structure as the bass cabinets will always fight you, and no arm setup fixes a structural problem.

Related: Setting the arm up so it tracks The pitch will not sit where you put it

Short answer. Two lamps answer this before you touch the fader at all. The SL-1200MK7 runs plus or minus 8 or plus or minus 16 per cent, selectable, and the range button says which one you are in: The pitch range select button is marked x2, and its lamp is the answer: lit is plus or minus 16 per cent and unlit is plus or minus 8 per cent. Then read the RESET lamp, because it decides whether the fader is connected to anything: RESET LED on: Fixed to the preset value. RESET LED off: Can be adjusted with [PITCH ADJ].

Why this happens. A DJ arriving on this deck from an older SL-1200 has muscle memory calibrated to one range and one behaviour. On an MK2 the range is fixed at about plus or minus 8 per cent and there is no reset at all, so you find zero by eye against the platter markings. Here the range is switchable and there is a reset, so a deck that feels impossibly twitchy is usually a deck somebody left in the wide setting, a deck that will not return to zero is usually a reset button nobody knew was there, and a fader that appears to do nothing whatsoever is usually a RESET lamp left lit. Panasonic's first step in the pitch procedure is exactly that: Press [RESET] to turn off the RESET LED lamp.

Fix it now. Set the range you want, press RESET until the lamp is out, then beatmatch from a known zero. If the deck holds a tempo but the tempo is wrong, confirm the speed selector is on the right value. This model runs 33-1/3 and 45 rpm, and 78 rpm once the 78 rpm setting is enabled, after which pressing the [33] and [45] speed buttons together selects it, and a third speed reached by a button combination is a genuinely new way to be playing a record at the wrong speed. To read the pitch rather than guess at it, use the platter edge: The four rows of strobe mirrors around the edge of the turntable can assist you in measuring pitch. There is a condition attached to that: The strobe mirrors are lit by the strobe light (LED lighting) synchronized with the precise frequency of the digital control. Always use this LED lighting to measure the pitch.

Avoid it next time. Make the pitch range part of your setup check, the same way you would check a mixer's gain. It takes a second and it is the difference between a fader that behaves and a fader that fights you the whole way through.

Related: The switch block, and why the deck feels wrong What Panasonic publishes, and what they do not

Short answer. The SL-1200MK7 blinks a speed select button at you when the drive cannot do its job, and Panasonic document both the usual cause and the way out. The usual cause is one instruction long: Do not press [START-STOP] when the turntable is removed. If that is what happened, the speed select button indicator starts blinking, and the way back is to turn [ON/OFF] to turn the unit off, fit the turntable and then turn [ON/OFF] to turn the unit on

Why this happens. The platter is the moving half of a direct drive motor, so with it lifted off there is nothing for the drive to control and the deck reports that rather than spinning up. It is the state a deck is most often left in after a slipmat change or a clean, and to the next person it looks exactly like a dead deck, which is why it belongs on this page rather than in a manual nobody has in the booth.

Fix it now. Panasonic's full sequence for a blinking speed indicator is: Turn [ON/OFF] to OFF. Pull out the power plug, wait for three seconds, and then insert the plug again. Turn [ON/OFF] to ON and press [START-STOP] to rotate the turntable. If the indicator on the speed select button blinks again, check which one is blinking and contact our service representative.

Avoid it next time. Do not press [START-STOP] to test a deck whose platter is off, and put the platter back before the power goes back on. If the blink survives Panasonic's sequence it is a service call rather than a setting, and nothing inside is a user job: Do not remove covers. Do not repair this unit by yourself. Refer servicing to qualified service personnel.

Related: The switch block, and why the deck feels wrong Panasonic's SL-1200MK7 owner's manual

Short answer. The SL-1200MK7 carries a block of numbered switches that no earlier SL-1200 had, and Panasonic list five settings on it: LED color setting, reverse playback setting, 78 rpm setting, torque setting and brake setting. They are numbered switches set with a fine Phillips head screwdriver, TQ1 and TQ2 for torque and BK1 and BK2 for brake. Nothing on the top panel tells you where any of them are set. Panasonic's parts diagram lists only terminals on the back of the deck, and no Panasonic document this page uses says where the switch block itself sits, so look for the legends rather than for a panel.

Why this happens. Panasonic gave this model 4 levels of starting torque and 4 levels of brake, which is a real improvement and also a real trap in a shared booth. Starting torque changes how fast the platter reaches speed, so it changes the sound of every single start. Brake strength changes how the record dies when you hit stop. A DJ who set them for their own style and left them there hands the next person a deck that behaves differently from every other SL-1200 they have ever touched, and there is no indicator anywhere on the top surface. Panasonic's factory positions are reverse playback disabled, 78 rpm disabled, red LEDs, torque at step 3 of the four and brake at step 2 of the four, with step 1 the strongest and step 4 the weakest, so anything else on the block is somebody's decision rather than the deck's.

Fix it now. Reverse is the one that panics people, so take it first, and coming out of it is a top panel move that needs no screwdriver: To return to normal playback, press [START-STOP] again while pressing the turntable speed select button or buttons. Getting into that state in the first place is Panasonic's sequence, the REV switch, switch 3, set with the unit off and the power plug pulled out, then the speed select button or buttons and [START-STOP] pressed together, which starts reverse play whether the platter is rotating or stopped, and the procedure attached to the switch half of it is not optional: Turn the unit off and pull out the power plug. Adjust as desired by setting the switches with a fine Phillips head screwdriver and the like. So torque, brake, reverse and 78 rpm are a get-in job on a cold deck, never something you reach for between records.

Avoid it next time. Settle the switch block while the decks are still cold, as part of arriving on an unfamiliar pair, in the same breath as checking the pitch range. Once the music is running the only way to read those settings is to listen to a start and a stop. It is the single biggest difference between working an MK7 and working any deck that came before it.

Related: The pitch will not sit where you put it What the MK7 added

The mixer has to have a phono input. That is the whole SL-1200MK7 requirement and it is the one people get caught by. Panasonic put it in the connection instructions: You will not have adequate volume or sound quality if the connected amplifier has no PHONO input terminals. A cartridge output needs a phono stage, meaning both a large amount of gain and RIAA equalisation. Plug this deck into a line input and you get a thin, quiet signal with no bass, which sounds like a broken deck and is a routing mistake. Every mixer this site documents beside it has switchable phono inputs.

Timecode and DVS. This deck is a normal turntable, so timecode vinyl works on it the way it works on any turntable, and the software is the part that decides what is supported. Timecode brings its own failure that pressed records do not have: a worn timecode record degrades tracking long before it sounds obviously bad, and the symptom is software that stutters or loses position rather than audible damage.

Speeds. 33-1/3 and 45 rpm, and 78 rpm once the 78 rpm setting is enabled, after which pressing the [33] and [45] speed buttons together selects it. There is no separate 78 control to find, and on an untouched deck the button combination does nothing at all, because 78 rpm ships disabled. Once somebody has enabled it, it is also the reason a deck can be in 78 without anything obvious saying so.

Cartridges. Supported cartridge weight is 5.6 to 12.0 g without an auxiliary weight, or 14.3 to 20.7 g including the headshell. Panasonic specify the headshell terminal as a 1.2 mm diameter four-pin terminal lug and, notably, never attach a standard's name to it. This site gives the dimension they give and does not invent the name, because the names in circulation for that fitting are not Panasonic's.

Related: One channel has gone silent The DJ technical dictionary

The additions. A second pitch range, so the fader covers plus or minus 8 or plus or minus 16 per cent, selectable. A pitch reset button. Reverse play. Four levels of starting torque and four of brake. A third speed, 33-1/3 and 45 rpm, and 78 rpm once the 78 rpm setting is enabled, after which pressing the [33] and [45] speed buttons together selects it. A detachable phono lead and a detachable power cord. And a pop-up white LED that rises to light the stylus.

Two of those additions are switched off when the deck leaves the factory. The SL-1200MK7 ships with reverse play disabled and 78 rpm disabled, so the button combinations for them do nothing at all until somebody enables the setting behind them. Panasonic's factory positions across the whole block are reverse playback disabled, 78 rpm disabled, red LEDs, torque at step 3 of the four and brake at step 2 of the four, with step 1 the strongest and step 4 the weakest.

What stayed. Panasonic are explicit that this deck was built to feel like the ones before it, following SL-1200MK6 specifications such as dimensions, button layout, and inertial mass of the platter. That is their wording, and it is the reason an MK7 reads as familiar under the hands even though the electronics inside are new.

The motor, and two Panasonic documents that disagree. The owner's manual specification table calls it a brushless dc motor. The press release announcing the deck calls it a newly developed coreless direct drive motor. Both are Panasonic, both are current, and they are almost certainly describing one part. This page gives the manual's wording because a specification table is where a specification lives, and names the other so you are not surprised when you see it quoted elsewhere.

What it is not. There is no quartz lock claim on this model in the way there is on the MK2, where quartz-locked pitch was the headline feature of the deck. Do not carry that language across.

Related: The switch block Technics on the SL-1200 features

The published figures. Type direct drive manual turntable. Platter Aluminium diecast, 332 mm diameter, approximately 1.8 kg including the slipmat and slip sheet. Speeds 33-1/3 and 45 rpm, and 78 rpm once the 78 rpm setting is enabled, after which pressing the [33] and [45] speed buttons together selects it. Starting torque 0.18 N-m, which is 1.8 kg-cm. Start-up 0.7 seconds from standstill to 33-1/3 rpm. Wow and flutter 0.025 % WRMS. Weight approximately 9.6 kg. Operating range 0 to +40 degrees C, at 35 % to 80 % relative humidity with no condensation. Announced January 2019, at CES.

Rumble is not published anywhere. It is absent from the specification page, from the North American specification PDF, from the owner's manual and from Technics own turntable comparison chart, which carries no rumble row for any model. The MK2 published both a weighted and an unweighted figure in 1979. That is not a criticism of the deck, it is a gap you should know about before you compare it to anything.

The pitch range is missing from the spec pages. It is in the owner's manual specification table as plus or minus 8 or plus or minus 16 per cent, selectable and it appears on neither the UK product specification page nor the North American specification PDF, both of which list no pitch figure at all. Two Panasonic documents, one number, one of them silent.

Dimensions, which this page used to withhold. The SL-1200MK7 measures 453 mm wide, 169 mm high and 353 mm deep. This page held them back on the grounds that only the height and the depth had been found in a Panasonic document. All three figures are printed twice, in the owner's manual specification table and on the North American specification sheet, so there is nothing to infer and nothing to withhold.

Model names. SL-1200MK7 and the SL-1210MK7 export name, an SL-1200MK7-S silver finish for North America, the SL-1200M7L 50th anniversary edition of 12,000 units, and the SL-1200M7ALD collaboration edition.

Related: Technics specification page North American specification PDF The announcement

Short answer. Five things on an SL-1200MK7, in this order, and none of them take more than a minute. Earth lead attached and screwed down. Phono lead fully seated at the back. Headshell tight in the collar and the wires on their pins. Counterweight and anti-skating where you left them, and the arm lock locked, which Panasonic state plainly: Do not use the product with the arm lock released. Deck level and sitting on something that is not shaking.

Why that order. It runs from the fault that ruins the whole set to the fault that ruins one record. A missing earth hums through everything you play and cannot be turned down. A half seated phono lead loses a channel. A loose headshell mistracks and can take the stylus with it. Counterweight and anti-skating drift in transport, and an unlevel deck on a resonant surface skips on the loud parts and nowhere else.

The switch block goes on the list too, and it goes on it early. Starting torque, brake strength, reverse play and 78 rpm are all switch settings on this model with no indication on the top surface, so a deck that starts, stops or runs backwards differently from what your hands expect is a switch somebody else moved. It belongs at the front of the get-in because of how Panasonic tell you to change one: Turn the unit off and pull out the power plug. Adjust as desired by setting the switches with a fine Phillips head screwdriver and the like.

What to carry. A spare headshell, already wired and already balanced, and a spare phono lead. Between them they cover the two faults most likely to silence a channel, and on this deck both are a plug-in swap rather than a repair.

Related: There is a hum in the system Setting the arm up so it tracks The switch block

Settle the switch block before your hands do. Starting torque and brake strength are 4 positions each on numbered switches set with a fine Phillips head screwdriver, TQ1 and TQ2 for torque and BK1 and BK2 for brake, and the top surface shows none of it. Both are personal settings, so on a shared deck they sit wherever the last DJ wanted them, and torque changes the sound of every start you make. Changing one is not a mid-set move: Turn the unit off and pull out the power plug. Adjust as desired by setting the switches with a fine Phillips head screwdriver and the like.

Pick the pitch range, press reset, then beatmatch. The fader covers plus or minus 8 or plus or minus 16 per cent, selectable, so the same hand movement is twice the tempo change in the wider setting, and the reset button beside the fader hands you a known zero wherever the fader happens to be. A deck that feels impossibly twitchy is usually one left in the wider range.

Learn the reverse combination before you need to come out of it. Panasonic's own sequence is the REV switch, switch 3, set with the unit off and the power plug pulled out, then the speed select button or buttons and [START-STOP] pressed together, which starts reverse play whether the platter is rotating or stopped, and coming out of it is a top panel move: To return to normal playback, press [START-STOP] again while pressing the turntable speed select button or buttons. A record running backwards on this model is a switch somebody moved, not a failure.

Buy your spares by part number. The phono lead is K4EY4YY00003, the earth lead is K4EY1YY00189 and the power cord is K2CG3YY00219. All three detach on this model, which is what makes carrying a spare worth doing, and it is also why a half seated connector belongs on your list of things that silence a channel. Panasonic put a restriction on substitutes: Do not use any other AC power supply cord, PHONO cable and PHONO earth lead except the supplied one.

Three limits before anything goes on the platter. The SL-1200MK7 takes a record stabilizer up to 1 kg, which is Panasonic's own maximum. There is a magnet under the platter, and Panasonic are blunt about it: Keep any IC card or magnetic card such as a credit card away from the turntable. And the mat has a right way up: Front side (Printed side): Record mounting face. Back side: Slip face. The slip sheet is a thin, transparent sheet. Be careful not to throw it away by mistake.

Do not build an argument on this deck's platter weight or its rumble. Panasonic's platter figure here includes the slipmat and the slip sheet, which the older deck's figure does not, and they publish no rumble figure for this model anywhere. One number that is not comparable and one that does not exist are not evidence about how a deck sounds.

Related: The pre-gig checklist The switch block

What is on the back. PHONO pin jacks and an earth terminal. And the thing that separates this deck from the classics: on the MK7 the phono lead, the earth lead and the power cord are all detachable, and Panasonic list each one as its own part. The phono lead is K4EY4YY00003, the earth lead is K4EY1YY00189, the power cord is K2CG3YY00219.

Why that is the single most practical change. On an SL-1200MK2 the phono leads read as fixed to the chassis, so a damaged lead is a repair job. Here it is a cable you carry a spare of. In a rental or club context that turns one of the most common physical failures on a turntable, a lead crushed by a road case or a plug pulled sideways one too many times, into a thirty second swap.

The trap that comes with it. A connector that can be unplugged is a connector that can be half plugged in, so a detachable phono lead joins the list of things that silence a channel. Seat it properly, and if a channel drops out mid set, reseat it before you go looking for a cartridge fault.

Power. AC 120 V, 60 Hz in the owner's manual specification table, and AC 110 to 240 V, 60 Hz on the North American specification sheet. Consumption is 8.0 W switched on, and approximately 0.2 W switched off, a figure the North American specification sheet labels standby. That small figure is not an automatic standby and there is no timer behind it: the deck has one mechanical ON/OFF switch and nothing that powers itself down. Panasonic are explicit about what that switch does not do: Although the AC power switch is in the "OFF" position, the unit is not completely disconnected from the mains. Remove the plug from the main electrical outlet if you will not be using the unit for an extended period of time. Place the unit so the plug can be easily removed.

The order Panasonic give for connecting it. Turn off all units and disconnect the AC power supply cord from the socket before making any connections. Connect the AC power supply cord only after all other connections are completed. There is also a restriction on the leads themselves, which matters the moment you go looking for spares: Do not use any other AC power supply cord, PHONO cable and PHONO earth lead except the supplied one. Buy the Panasonic part numbers above rather than a generic lead out of the bottom of a bag.

Related: There is a hum in the system One channel has gone silent

The numbers Panasonic publish. The arm is universal, static balance, effective length 230 mm, overhang 15 mm, offset angle 22 degrees. Arm height adjusts across 0 to 6 mm. Stylus pressure dials 0 to 4 g, direct reading. Tracking error is specified within 2 degrees 32 minutes at the outer groove and 0 degrees 32 minutes at the inner groove of a 30 cm record. Cartridge weight supported is 5.6 to 12.0 g without an auxiliary weight, or 14.3 to 20.7 g including the headshell, and the headshell itself weighs approximately 7.6 g.

Mounting a cartridge, and the number that is not the specification. The overhang figure above is the published specification. The number you actually set at the headshell is a different one: Move the cartridge to adjust the overhang in such a way that the stylus tip is at 52 mm from the head shell mounting end. Panasonic also put a requirement on the cartridge itself for anyone who scratches: When performing scratching (including reverse play), use a cartridge and stylus for DJs.

Balancing it, in Panasonic's order. The sequence is turn the anti-skating control to 0, free the tone arm from the rest and turn the balance weight until the arm is approximately horizontal, turn the stylus pressure control until 0 is on the centre line, then turn the balance weight to the stylus pressure the cartridge calls for. Doing it out of order is why a deck that reads 2 g on the dial is not tracking at 2 g.

The number this page will not give you. Panasonic publish the range the arm can dial and no recommendation for what to set it to. Your cartridge maker publishes a tracking force for your specific cartridge, and that is the number to use. Anyone quoting a single figure for all DJ use is guessing on your behalf: too light mistracks and skips, too heavy wears records faster, and the correct answer genuinely depends on the cartridge hanging off the front of the arm.

Anti-skating, and the ceiling on it. Panasonic's instruction is one line: Turn the anti-skating control to adjust it to the same value as the stylus pressure control. So whatever tracking force your cartridge calls for, the anti-skating control goes to the matching value. The matching stops at three, which the page used to leave out: For stylus pressures 3 g and above, adjust anti-skating control to "3". It is the step people skip, and it shows up as a deck that skips in one direction rather than randomly. Scratching gets its own instruction again: When performing scratching (including reverse play), adjust the anti-skating control depending on the scratch movements to perform to reduce skating.

Arm height, and the lock that has to go back on. The helicoid adjustment exists so the arm sits parallel to the record with your cartridge on it, and cartridges have different heights. Panasonic publish a chart matching cartridge height to a position mark, 17 mm to position 0 through 23 mm to position 6, for the supplied headshell, so nobody has to guess at it. The adjustment is made with the arm lock released and the lock goes straight back on afterwards, because Panasonic state it plainly: Do not use the product with the arm lock released. Be sure to turn the arm lock knob to the end. You may need to apply some force to do so. Scratching, again, has its own line: When performing scratching (including reverse play), adjust the arm-height control ring depending on the scratch movements to perform to reduce skating. Setting all of this once for the cartridge you actually use is worth more than any other five minutes you will spend on this deck.

Related: The needle jumps when the bass drops What wears out

The stylus is the consumable. It is the only part in contact with the record and it wears from the first play. A worn stylus does not announce itself: it mistracks, it makes records sound duller than they are, and it damages the records it plays. Panasonic do not publish a life figure because it belongs to the cartridge, so the cartridge maker's number is the one to use.

The mat and the platter. The platter is Aluminium diecast, 332 mm diameter, approximately 1.8 kg including the slipmat and slip sheet. Note that Panasonic's platter weight for this deck INCLUDES the slipmat and slip sheet, which the MK2's figure does not, so the two numbers are not comparable and nobody should conclude from them that one platter is heavier than the other. The press release says this deck follows the earlier generation's inertial mass, which is the claim that actually describes how it feels.

What does not wear. There is no belt, because it is direct drive. There is no firmware to degrade. The motor is brushless dc motor, which is a design with no brushes to replace, and it is most of why these decks stay in service for decades.

Between sets. Keep the stylus clean the way Panasonic describe it: Take off the head shell with the cartridge and clean the stylus using a soft brush. Brush from the base to the tip. Keep the earth lead attached, and keep the arm rest clip actually clipped. Cleaning the deck itself carries two prohibitions: Do not use solvents including benzene, thinner, alcohol, kitchen detergent, a chemical wiper, etc. This might cause the exterior case to be deformed or the coating to come off. Do not wipe the dust cover when it is in place. Doing so may cause the tone arm to be attracted towards the dust cover as a result of the generated static electricity.

The dust cover comes off before the record goes on. Panasonic say it in one line for the SL-1200MK7: Be sure the dust cover is removed while playing a record. And the stylus light has to be down before the cover goes back on: Be sure the stylus light is pressed down when attaching the dust cover. If the dust cover is attached with the stylus light raised, it may touch the dust cover.

Moving it, which is where the damage happens. Before you move the unit, turn the unit off, pull out the power plug and disconnect all connected devices. For anything further than the next room, Panasonic's pack-down is take off the turntable and slipmat and carefully wrap them, remove the head shell and balance weight from the tone arm and carefully wrap them, then clamp the tone arm with the arm clamp and tape it in place. Bringing a cold deck into a warm room has an answer of its own: Condensation may damage the unit. If it has occurred, turn the unit off and leave it until it adapts to the ambient temperature (approximately 2 to 3 hours).

What is a service job, and what the warranty covers. Panasonic draw that line hard: Do not remove covers. Do not repair this unit by yourself. Refer servicing to qualified service personnel. The platter's own fixing screws are on the far side of it as well: Do not touch the fixing screws (three locations) of the turntable. The rating performance cannot be guaranteed if they are out of position. The warranty runs two years parts and two years labour, in the United States and in Canada, and the exclusion that matters most to anyone reading this site is that it does not cover commercial use such as hotel, office, restaurant, or other business or rental use of the product.

Related: Setting the arm up so it tracks The needle jumps when the bass drops

Can it play 78 rpm records?

Yes, but not out of the box. The 78 rpm setting has to be enabled first, and after that pressing the [33] and [45] speed buttons together selects it.

Can it play in reverse, and how is it turned on?

It can. Reverse lives on the REV switch, switch 3, which is set with the unit off and the power plug pulled out. Once it is enabled, holding the speed select button and pressing [START-STOP] starts reverse play, and pressing [START-STOP] again while holding the speed button returns to normal playback.

Can the torque and the brake be adjusted?

Both, over 4 steps each. They are numbered switches, TQ1 and TQ2 for torque and BK1 and BK2 for brake, set with a fine Phillips screwdriver with the unit off and unplugged. From the factory torque sits at step 3 and brake at step 2, with step 1 the strongest in each case.

Where are those switches?

Panasonic do not say. They name the switches, give the procedure and print no location for them anywhere in the manual. That is an omission in the documentation rather than a missing feature.

Do the cables detach, and what are the replacement parts?

Both the power cord and the phono cable detach, and the earth lead is supplied. Panasonic give the part numbers as K2CG3YY00219 for the power cord, K4EY4YY00003 for the phono cable and K4EY1YY00189 for the earth lead, and instruct that no other cord, phono cable or earth lead should be used.