Denon DJ · Denon DJ Prime series · Introduced 2017

VL12 Prime

Denon DJ VL12 Prime

Denon DJ announced the VL12 Prime at NAMM in January 2017 as the turntable in its first Prime line-up, and DJWORX noted that Denon designed and built it in-house rather than basing it on the Hanpin design used by many rivals. It is a quartz direct-drive deck with a high-torque setting rated at 5 kgf/cm and a lower setting, a 0.3-second start time, 33 and 45 rpm, and pitch ranges of 8, 16 and 50 percent either way, plus a reset button that returns to zero regardless of the fader. The die-cast aluminum platter sits above an RGB light ring with 12 colors, adjustable brightness and a lights-out mode. The S-shaped tonearm has a rest-or-lock position in place of a separate clip, and four isolation feet are meant to resist booth vibration. It is a purely analog deck with a phono-level RCA output and no USB, so it reaches Serato or other software only through a DVS-capable mixer or interface such as the X1850 Prime. Digital DJ Tips listed no keylock, no 78 rpm, no line output and no included dust cover among its drawbacks. In this catalog it competes with the Technics SL-1200MK7 and Pioneer DJ PLX-1000.