Technics RP-DH1200 Headphones Review

Introduction to the RP DH1200s Review

Tired of not being able to hear much through my old headphones, some crappy £15 budget ones from Numark, I thought I’d splash out and get some nice ones. And I chose the RPDH1200 model from Technics (at a £95 (approx $190 – but in the US you can get it cheaper) cost).

The main features advertised are its folding arms for single side monitoring, 24k gold plated plug on the end of a 3m (when fully extended) detachable coiled cable. Oh and of course the great quality sound.

I ordered mine from decks.co.uk (my favourite DJ equipment store) at 3.30pm, and less than 24 hours later there was someone at my door asking me to sign for it. Very good service from decks, yet again (I don’t work for them or have any affiliation with them – just like their service).

Upon opening the box and getting them out I found that they were folded into their “storage” mode (see photo). To be honest, this confused me, and it took a while for me to work out how they rotate (shh! I’ve never had hands on before with a pair like these…). Basically they allow you to flip the ear part around 180 degrees, so you can listen to one ear without having to “half” wear the whole headphones. If that makes any sense at all?! It also rotates 90 degrees on a horizontal plane. See the photo of the instructions as that will make more sense…

Next out of the box was the coiled cable, which I must say, I can’t work out how I lived without headphones with a coiled cable. When coiled up it is 1.2m (3.9 feet) in length, but it goes out as far as 3m (9.8 feet) – much more than you need, but unlike uncoiled headphones they never get in the way or tangled up. Which when you’ve got a laptop, a couple of decks, a couple of cdjs and a mixer it really does help when setting the gear up…! It also has the bonus of being long (3m is quite long for headphones) and you don’t end up stepping on it.

The detachable cord plugs into the left ear piece. It slides in then a clockwise turn locks it in place. An anti clockwise turn then pulling it out releases it. This ensures it won’t accidentally fall out (of course if you walk away with headphones on, the end connecgted to your mixer will come out anyway), and also means if you break the cable you don’t have to either do a bit of a bodge and fix it, or get a whole new set of ‘phones. Just order a new cable...

Ok so now how does it sound? Very good. They could be a bit better for this price I think, and after talking to others who have tested out similar headphones the general consensus is that while it sounds nice, if you’re going to go looking for negative things you will come up with slightly below par sound quality. But I personally think they’re more than suitable for DJing.