This has been a sad day for analog music fans. Earlier this week, Sony announced that they were finally stopping production on their famous Walkman line of portable cassette players (coincidentally enough, on the same day as the iPod celebrated its ninth birthday)… but at least no one really used Walkmen anymore.

It’s about to get worse though, especially for DJs. Panasonic has just come clean that a little over a week ago, they stopped production on their SL-1200MK6 analog turntable, the SH-EX1200 analog audio mixer and RP-DH120 and RP-DJ1200 stereo headphones due to “challenges in the marketplace.”

“Panasonic decided to end production mainly due to a decline in demand for these analog products and also the growing difficulty of procuring key analog components necessary to sustain production,” Panasonic told the Tokyo Reporter in a statement.

This is actually a huge bummer. The SL-1200MK6 turntable is a staple gadget for DJs and record enthusiasts, known for their great sound and practically indefatigable resilience. Record players are rarely known to break anyway, but Panasonic’s Technics, in particular, are considered best-of-breed.

You can’t really blame Panasonic, of course: turntables just don’t really sell outside of an extreme niche of audiophiles and collectors anymore, and Panasonic’s business is based around selling gadgets to a mainstream audience. Smaller companies will doubtlessly continue to market turntables, even good ones, but nonetheless, this is the end of an era: if you’ve ever heard a DJ spin a good beat at a club, or fondly remember your grandfather placing a record on his turntable before sitting down to smoke his pipe, it was probably done on a Technics.

Read more at Tokyo Reporter