Thursday, December 10, 2009

Rumor: Panasonic To Cease Production of Technics Turntables in 2010? (BAD IDEA)


I have read multiple articles over the past week stating that Panasonic will be ceasing production of the most popular DJ turntable of all time, the Technics SL-1200 and SL-1210.  The story was first seen at the DMCWorld site:

"We have just heard the sad new from Panasonic (the manufacturer of Technics) that production of the world famous Technics SL-1200 and SL-1210 DJ turntables will stop at the end of February 2010.


This marks the end of an era – Technics have been the industry standard for over 35 years with this turntable and the SL-1200 is synonymous with the DJ culture. It has been released and re-released over 9 times with different models and numerous other manufacturers have tried to compete with this deck, but above all, the Technics SL-1200 & Technics SL-1210 are the undisputed number one deck in the world."

With the rise in popularity of digital music, turntable sales have been going down for awhile now.  The thing that many people outside of the DJ community may not realize is that programs such as Stanton's Final Scratch, Rane's Serato Scratch Live or Native Instruments Traktor Scratch allow you to use turntables and encoded vinyl to play music from your computer so there is still a big demand in the DJ world for Technics.

With the popularity of the DJ Hero game, you have to imagine that more and more people will want to become DJ's in the next couple of years.  Since everyone has some form of an MP3 music library these days, you would think Panasonic would see the potential in selling more of the Technics turntables to the up and coming DJ's to use with their DJ software.  I also read an article the other day that said vinyl sales are on the rise again. If this trend continues, Panasonic could be missing out on more new purchases of Technics turntables from the non-DJ crowd.    

It's possible this is all just a really cruel viral marketing campaign to help increase demand during the holiday season.  Check this out from ResidentAdvisor.net:

While all this was going on elsewhere, the DMCUpdate page where the story first originated was altered, now informing readers that: "Our latest update on the subject of the continued production of Technics turntables is that Panasonic NZ have now been advised by Panasonic Japan that there has not been an official decision made either way at this time. It may be some time before there is an official announcement from Panasonic Japan but we will keep you updated." In The Mix was also finding it difficult to get a straight answer from Panasonic, with the Australian branch of the multi-national offering a closing statement that said, "In regard to the discontinuation of Technics analogue turntables, Panasonic Corp. has made no official global announcement with regard to this matter. Panasonic Australia is unable to provide any further comment."

Well, we can now reveal that all talk of production stopping on Technics turntables has been untrue, as Panasonic have issued us with the following blog asking, "is this a mean viral marketing stratergy (sic) to boost glob
al sales of their turntables?"  

"As a major global business, Panasonic keeps all of its operations under constant review. However, there are no current plans to discontinue the Technics brand and the production of Technics turntables."

If you were ever even considering selling your decks any time soon, you might want to seriously reconsider. Even if Panasonic does continue production of the Technics turntable, it sounds like they are starting to think about winding down production at some point in the future.

There will always be a demand for Technics because they are so well built and seem to last forever so if you wait a few years and wait for supplies to be depleted, you could fetch a decent price for your decks if they are in decent condition. I could see a day where you were you were actually being paid MORE for your used decks than what you paid for them brand new.

I would never sell mine unless I absolutely had to due to financial reasons but it may be something you may want to consider for the future.


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