hmm, actually I don't understand why they didn't go all the way and put in +/- 50% pitch like some competitors did years ago - why should the company making the turntables have something to say about what I want to mix with what...? technics never seems to be particularly interested in improving their product any...
well, the way I see it there's not much to improve. Well you could get rid of that stupid gray area near 0 pitch, but I haven't seen that kind of an innovation that is necessary to mixing. +/- 16% pitch is bound to be more inaccurate because the pitch, being an analog instrument, is proportional to the amount of movement. And if you don't enlarge the actual pitch length the pitch will be more inaccurate.
(figures are
examplory) i.e. 1mm movement on +/- 8% pitch responds with 0,01% shift in bpm where in +/- 16% pitch it would require a 0,5mm shift to get the same change. These movements are so small that it becomes difficult handle with the 16% pitch
Just an idea, why won't they do a switch between +/- 4% and +/- 8% pitches. The 4% pitch would extremely accurate and +/- 8% would enough to fit quite different bpm's together. IMO dj should play records in that way that you don't need extremely large pitch to mix. Tempo can altered/raised with other, much smoother techniques. Turntablism is a a whole differnet thing then.
edit: isn't +/- 4% pitch available in some vestax models?
I think this discussion was quite recently a popular subject on the 313 mailing list ;)
