To some people Black Friday means good things.  It's the day after Thanksgiving and if you don't work in retail, healthcare, or banking...you probably have the day off work.  And it's well known that it is THE biggest shopping day of the year.  Stores open super early, there are sales where you can get extremely good deals assuming you are the first to get to what you want, because all the good stuff gets bought immediately.  But there is a dark side to Black Friday, hence the name.  Traffic jams, crazy attitudes, maniacal shoppers, stampedes, parking lot drama, fights over children's toys...all in the name of Christianity right??  I mean they are doing all of this for Christmas right?  But I digress.  Let's add another horrible thing to the list of what makes Black Friday so BLACK.

It was Friday morning that I was checking my emails and my good friend instant messaged me to tell me that Technics will discontinue the long lived SL-1200 turntable in February 2010.  The turntable that has been the industry standard for as long as I can remember.  Hell for damn near as long as I've been alive.  He told me that the news was all over the internet and taking a look myself, it definitely was all over the internet.   The only problem was that what I was reading is that this news came out of Australia and originated on a forum, but supposedly came from a Panasonic Australia spokesman.  The only problem is that there is no official statement posted on any of Panasonic's websites, and no one seems to be able to track down an actual official statement anywhere.  That does not mean it is not true, but that also means, there is still the possibility that it is a rumor.  Really all this does is open this all up for speculation as no one really knows what this means if it is true.  The statement did not say that Technics was shutting down for good, only that due to low sales globally in analog turntables, that the Technics Turntables will cease to be produced.  It did not say that this effects Technics on a global scale, or if it was just aimed at the Australian market.  It also did not make mention of whether CD players, mixers, headphones or any other products would still continue to be produced under the Technics name.

Now although there is no official statement from Panasonic on this, that does not surprise me at all.  It seems that a few years ago Technics tried to slip out the backdoor on the CD turntable market as their late-comer to the CDJ game, the SL-DZ1200 was seen as a failure by many, and loved by few (I happen to fall into that latter category!).  The DZ-1200 was greatly hyped before it came out, but after it hit the market, it was poorly supported by Technics.  After a couple of firmware updates were made available, existing issues with the DZ's were still unfixed.  Some speculate that the issues were unfixable in the first place due to hardware limitations.  But Technics was very tight lipped about it all and efforts to contact the company were usually met with no response and in the rare instance that they would respond, they really never had anything to say.  It began to look more and more as if they had just simply abandoned the DZ.  A couple years many stores no longer carried the model, and some of those that did were informed that the DZ was being discontinued, but no official statement was ever made by Technics.  The final news informing us all that the DZ was gone for good was that Panasonic finally removed it from their website.  I suppose that's all we can do is wait and see what happens.  But it goes to show you that there is still a vested interest in Technics turntables seeing that unofficial news, which verges on being a rumor, can spread so quickly.  And if this is not true, this should go to show Panasonic/Technics that they should not ignore their customers the way they do, at least us DJs, because a global panic set in with this news, whether true or not, that our beloved turntables will be discontinued.  If I were MC Serch I would give Panasonic/Technics the gas face, but I'm King Skullie so I'm giving them the middle finger!