Technics

Technics (テクニクス) is a Japanese audio brand of Panasonic Corporation (known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. until 1 October 2008, with its head office in Kadoma, Osaka). The corporation itself was founded in 1918 in the Fukushima ward of Osaka by Konosuke Matsushita (松下幸之助, 1894-1989) and took its kabushiki kaisha form in 1935. The Technics name appeared in 1965 as a label for premium Matsushita loudspeakers on the Japanese domestic market - the EAB-1204 (later SB-1204) was the first model to carry it. Alongside Technics the corporation ran two other brands: National as its main domestic name from 1927, and Panasonic on exports from 1955. The three sat in distinct slots: National for everyday consumer goods, Panasonic for export, Technics for audiophile components. In October 2010 Panasonic wound down most Technics consumer products; the brand was brought back at IFA 2014, and Technics turntables returned to the catalogue in January 2016 with new SL-1200 variants.

The lasting Technics contribution is the direct-drive turntable. Shuichi Obata, an engineer at Matsushita, devised a layout in which the motor turned the platter directly with no belt in between; the 1969 Technics SP-10 was claimed as the first commercial direct-drive turntable on the professional market. Using the same platform the company developed the consumer SL-1200 in 1971 and put it on sale in 1972. The 1979 SL-1200 MK2 added a pitch-control slider and held its speed tightly enough under load to become the de-facto standard turntable of the DJ business for decades after. In 1981 Technics shipped the SV-P100, one of the earliest consumer PCM digital audio recorders. The vertical-format SL-7 (1981) and SL-10 (1980-1984) used a linear tracking arm in which the cartridge moved in a straight line parallel to the radius of the record, instead of swinging through an arc as a conventional tonearm does.

The Technics Showa-era catalogue ran on four main letter codes. SL covered vinyl turntables: the SP-10 professional, the SL-1200 and SL-1200 MK2 direct-drive consumer decks, the linear-tracking SL-7 and SL-10, and the compact SL-5. RS was the cassette-deck range (the RS-617U, RS-M270X and the RS-M240X with auto-calibration). SU and SE marked the amplifier lines, the top SE-A series running a separate high-power output topology. SB carried the loudspeakers (the line that grew out of the original EAB-1204). The Cubic furniture range packaged Technics components inside ready-made wooden racks, with the bigger, more serious EXE system above it; the 1984 Concise line was a midi-format hi-fi aimed at tighter rooms. By the late 1980s Technics also supplied the components inside Matsushita’s Intelligent Compo systems, and the two halves of the period ran side by side: Technics Intelligent Compo (D5, D7, D8 and the floor-standing D9 at ¥350,000) at the top, with Panasonic Intelligent Compo at the mid-tier - see Panasonic for the full split.