Things we love: Hip hop and club culture would not have been possible without Technics turntables

There are products, gadgets, initiatives or ideas that we particularly love besides music itself. Here we present them in loose regularity. Today Dennis Sand dedicates himself to a pop historical heavyweight.

In modern pop culture, a brand isn’t just a brand. In modern pop culture, every brand is always a promise. However, there aren’t too many brands that can ingrain their promise of value as deeply into the history of music culture as Japanese brand Technics.

In addition to high-quality sound systems, their turntables are something like the most prominent brand ambassadors. Because the thing is, if you buy a Technics turntable, you don’t just buy a Technics turntable. Whoever buys a Technics turntable also buys a piece of pop history. Each device weighs so much more than the physical weight it actually weighs. It is his history that makes him a cultural heavyweight.

No hip hop, no club culture without Technics

For example, there is the hip hop thing. Because hip-hop as we know it today would probably not have been possible in this form if Technics hadn’t launched the Technics 1200 MK2 in 1980. A turntable that was so much more than just a turntable. The new 1200 did not work with a belt drive, as is usual with most devices, but with a motor drive. Twelve coils arranged in a circle repel the permanent magnet surrounding them in a circle on the underside of the turntable. You put the record on the slipmat – a thin felt mat – and the motor just kept turning when you fixed the record with light pressure. If you nudged it, it was immediately back in the right mix.

So if you put on two identical records and held one back while playing the second, it was possible to create a loop over an infinite period of time. In this way, with a certain dexterity, an endless beat was created that could be rapped over. It was also possible with the “Wheels Of Steel”, as the player was affectionately christened, to scratch records, to move them back and forth over the needle with the engine running, without damaging the record or the player. A stylistic device that should change the sound of hip-hop forever.

And then there’s the matter of club culture. Because the club culture as we know it today would hardly be possible in this form if the Technics 1200 MK2 and its possibilities for creating a loop had not been used to stretch songs out of several records so eternally that they over the strictly standardized radio seasons became an eternal mix that invited to an endless dance that made the momentum of ecstasy and thus the triumph of club culture possible in the first place. From that moment club culture meant that a club couldn’t have culture if there wasn’t a Technics turntable on the DJ set.

Turntables as part of cultural practice – and a heavyweight in pop history

And there lies the special meaning of the Technics turntables. They weren’t just players. They were tools too. Yes, instruments. They were not mere objects, but became part of cultural practice. Now you can say that it might be nice to know such a pop-historical heavyweight as the pop-historical heavyweight (a Technics 1200 MK2 weighs a robust eleven kilograms, by the way), but history is history and you can maybe put it in a museum stand it up or write it down and press it between two book covers, but it doesn’t necessarily belong in the living room at home. Here lies the third level of meaning: Technics turntables were not just playback devices and tools in one, they were also objects of design. With their clear lines, they offer a timeless elegance that acquires a certain value not only as a useful object, but also as an object of contemplation. And because Technics is a democratic brand, there are also devices that not only carry cultural weight but are also reasonably affordable, such as the SL-1500C, which you can get for under 800 euros as a high-quality player.

It is said that the Technics turntables are built to last. They are considered to be particularly capable of suffering. Some even say they are indestructible. In fact, in 2010 it seemed briefly as if an eternity could end one day: Because Technics announced that it would stop producing the classic 1200 MK2 (it had been produced identically since the 1980s). It was a reaction to a new era, a time in which DJs no longer traveled around the world with custom-made aluminum suitcases, but only with USB sticks suitable for hand luggage, and there had long been turntables that also allowed digital formats to be scratched and recorded mix. However, the protests were so great that in 2016 it was decided to restore the “Wheels Of Steel”. The fascination for the brand and the passion for the object remains indestructible.

In modern pop culture, a brand isn’t just a brand.

ttn-29