Pitch Controls

IMPORTANT: Make sure you have the pitch slider set at the center (0%) if you make any of the two following adjustments.

Also, the pitch gain on one 1200 is not necessarily the same on another 1200. Or, a +6 according to the scale on the first 1200 is probably not the same speed as a +6 according to the scale on the other.

Adjustment of pitch gain

Some have said that you can get +-15% pitch gain by doing this but on the decks that I have tried this on it doesn't get up that high. One consideration if you try this is that it gets harder to zero in on the exact speed when mixing beats.

Remove the top panel under the platter as described above. Look at the upper right hand corner of the PCB (printed circuit board). There will be a colored pot up there (blue) which sez "pitch" next to it. Use a multimeter on the pot to get a reference before turning it if you want to get back to where you started from. (test for resistance, one clip to the lead facing the back, the other on the lead to the right) Turning to the right should increase the gain (greater than +-8%) and vice versa. The pot is a little touchy when it comes to precision adjustment. There's a way to get it into factory spec with a frequency counter but I don't remember how at the moment.

Adjusting the pitch slider to 0% at center

Contrary to (popular?) belief there is no way to lose true 0% pitch when the slider is in the middle - no matter how you hack it. When in the middle there is a switch which is thrown which bypasses the pitch slider and the motor is now crystal locked at the exact speed. But, if your deck is messed up in this area when you move the slider in the + direction, for example, it will slow down at first and will then move to 0 and then will speed up as you move it more in the + direction! In other words you now have 0 at two places.

So this is for reference if you need to get your pitch slider so that 0 is really in the center. Open up the base, look where the pitch pot is. There will be a hole about 3-5mm in diameter where you can see a small pot on the other side. Hook up a multimeter to that pot (again, connect to the center lead and the one nearest the edge of the board I think) and use a small adjustment screwdriver to adjust it to 2.7kOhm.