Not Quite the End of an Era

A lot of people have been up in arms about Panasonic discontinuing production of the Technics 1200 and 1210 Direct Drive Turntable. It all turned out to be a big misunderstanding, which is one of those funny internet things to me.

I cared about this discussion though, because Technics has been the gold standard in turntables for multiple decades and I’ve owned turntables since 1996.

I remember bringing home my first pair of 1200s like it was yesterday. I remember having to get around the rules to have them in my dorm room as a cadet. I remember learning to scratch and juggle on them. I remember having to replace them twice when I moved to Germany and back to the states because they were destroyed both times.

I also remember not being able to find music easily and paying $10 to $12 for a single. I didn’t own much music back then, mind you, and became a digital convert before it was cool. I even traded my 1200 MKIIs for a pair of sldz 1200s in late 2004.

So What?

Hearing the original news of the end of the 1200 made me think of progress and change. It’s easy to want things to stay the way that they’ve always been, especially in business. But that doesn’t ever make things better, and things can always be better.

No matter what…

I personally really like being able to put all of my music on an 80GB portable hard drive that I can put in a drawer, instead of carving space out in my house to store thousands of records.

I also like being able to find and buy any song I like, in real time, for a tenth of the cost.

Convenience and value both trump nostalgia every day of the week. So the next time you find yourself lamenting over the fact that things are different, even when they don’t turn out to be, you should really try to find the ways that the change made your life better.

There are probably more than a few when you think about it.