Some businesses out there, despite making their name in a particular area, seem to know next to nothing about their market. Eventually, everyone else notices. I can’t quite work out what other explanation there is for this goof up from the Panasonic owned Technics.

Their turntables aren’t as good as they used to be – and don’t take my word for it. Take, instead, the word of Richard Talmage, an engineer with over 30 years experience of fixing things from turntables to military hardware. He wrote a review on Facebook of the Technics SL-1200MK7 – and was absolutely scathing.

And by the looks of it, they don’t know the dance music scene very well, either. This is where Technics made their name years ago with high quality turntables which were built to last and built with professional DJs in mind. To this day, you’ll barely read a criticism of them – because they lived up to the hype.

Derrick May’s name now appears on a page promoting the SL-1200 turntables on their own website. For a company like Technics to actually use an endorsement from a man accused of numerous sexual assaults is just staggering. They either pay no attention at all to what happens in the dance music scene, or they don’t care. Technics have been approached for comment on which one it is.

His fawning review appears next to that of Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez, one half of Masters At Work. For Gonzalez, his next move should be to contact Technics and ask what the hell they’re playing at – but given he believes that the so-called Detroit techno originators are “my brothers”, this doesn’t seem likely.

But there was one detail of May’s past with Technics turntables which, curiously, didn’t make the final cut. According to Michael James, “Derrick May didn’t mention that he stole plenty of Technics’s products using a credit card scam in the 1980s”.

This blog can’t possibly imagine why this detail didn’t appear in the testimonial…

Credit to Michael James goes for this brilliant find.