Short of actually playing music, this Technics SL-1200 MK2 turntable made from LEGO bricks is as near the real deal as it could possibly get.
With a build of over 2,000 pieces, the LEGO build pays tribute to the SL-1200 MK2, an iconic turntable from 1979 that became the club standard for all disc jockeys in the day, helping pioneer the scratching trend and even allegedly being the technical epicenter of movements like disco and house music genres. The submission comes from the mind of LEGO builder Tamás Borján, aka Tomasso Builds, who created the design from scratch, building it smaller than scale but exactly the perfect size to fit a 7-inch vinyl disc.
Designer: Tamás Borján (Tomasso Builds)
Tomasso’s SL-1200 MK2 may look undoubtedly brickish, but it’s as detailed as they come, with buttons, faders, settings, a weighted tonearm, rotating discs, and even a motor on the inside to power the entire experience. The built-in motor drives the turntable, which you can also spin manually to ‘scratch’ the disc, and Start and Stop buttons toggle the motor. The tonearm has adjustable weights and an anti-skating knob, and right under it is a pitch slider that deejays famously use to mix songs with different pitches or scales. Right beside the Start/Stop buttons is also a toggle switch to let you alternate between 33RPM and 45RPM speeds.
The movable parts and rotating turntable really make this build more than a sum of its bricks. The entire piece contains 2,215 LEGO bricks, which may sound like much, but a lot of the bricks go into building the turntable’s flat surfaces like the outer housing and the upper disc. A motor on the inside controls the disc’s rotation, and runs on a battery that also sits under the hood, giving you an overall LEGO kit that’s wireless and can be placed as a collectible anywhere around the house. We recommend keeping a few 7-inch vinyls nearby too to complete the look!
This isn’t the first LEGO turntable we’ve seen, though. Back in 2023, someone built a highly detailed version of the Pioneer CDJ 2000 that featured actual controls, a rotating disc, a dynamic display, and even a USB stick. Spiritually, however, the SL-1200 MK2 has a good 2 decades on the CDJ, given the fact that it absolutely dominated the 70s and 80s.
Tomasso’s build is currently a submission on the LEGO Ideas website – an online forum where LEGO builders and enthusiasts share their own creations and accept votes from the larger LEGO community. Entries that cross the 10,000 vote mark eventually get reviewed by LEGO’s own internal team and turned into box kits that us commonfolk can then buy. Tomasso’s submission is picking up votes at a surprising speed, having just crossed the 800-vote mark as of writing this piece. If you want to see an SL-1200 MK2 LEGO kit in the future, head down to the LEGO Ideas website and cast a vote for this fan-made build!
