Technics was actually the hi-fi brand for Matsushita (their brand for other stuff was Panasonic) – Technics made a full line of hi-fi equipment, from budget to top-end. In a similar manner, other Japanese brands also had their own hi-fi brand name at various times – the list includes the following brands, with the hi-fi brand in brackets: Toshiba (Aurex – derived from AU for Audio and REX for king) Sharp (Optonica), Hitachi ( Lo-D ), Sanyo (Otto), Matsushita (Technics) and Mitsubishi (Diatone). That list came from the Japanese Wikipedia website – there were some (e.g. Otto) that I hadn’t heard of. Some (eg Lo-D) were domestic Japanese market only brands – they still badged export hi-fi models as Hitachi. By far the longest serving of those brand names was Technics.
So I’d expect that Aurex made good quality hi-fi equipment. The Q in SR-Q200 indicates that it’s a quartz lock direct drive turntable (that was confirmed by an Ebay ad for a service manual), so it should be capable of quite reasonable performance – the Japanese only used quartz lock, on their mid-range to top-end turntables. Cheaper turntables were usually non-quartz-lock direct drive, with the speed user adjustable with reference to a stroboscope, with the cheapest (from the late-70’s onwards) being belt drive.
According to the picture of the service manual front cover, the specifications for the Toshiba/Aurex SR-Q200 are: wow and flutter less than 0.025% WRMS, rumble -75dB (DIN B weighted), weight 6.5kg, and it was sold in some export markets as the Toshiba SR-Q200. From the weight, I’d suspect that it’s probably a mid-range model, similar to the Technics SL-Q20 and SL-Q30 models, and because it has a straight tonearm, it’s probably a 1980’s model.
I suspect that Toshiba only used the Aurex brand name for a few years, and that’s why it’s hard to find much info about the equipment. According to Wikipedia Japan, they stopped using it in as an audio brand in 1985. However, it’s a fair bet their turntables were quite good. In fact, most of the Toshiba (and Aurex) branded turntables were as good as anything of similar price from other Japanese makers.
I couldn’t find any info on the Technics SL-19 anywhere – it obviously existed at some stage, but doesn’t exist in the very large list at Vintage Technics, or on vinylengine, or my Australian-sold turntable lists from the late 70’s to mid-80’s. It looks (from all the vendors selling belts for it) as though it is a belt drive turntable, so I’d be very surprised if it was as good as the Aurex SR-Q200 in performance.
Technics invented direct drive in 1970, and all their best turntables after that were direct drive, with only the very cheapest (but still quite competent) models being belt drive, as belt drive is cheaper to produce. None had performance to equal the specs I quoted above for the Toshiba/Aurex, although they weren’t far short. As Technics, with their huge resources, made many more turntable models (see * below) than any other manufacturer in the 1970’s and 1980’s, it’s no wonder their models looked good – they had a lot of practice!
Looks don’t equate to performance, though.
*In a 1981 list of Australian-sold turntables, which included 36 different manufacturers, the number of Technics models (17
) more than doubled that of the next most-prolific manufacturers - there were quite a few who had 7 or 8 models.
The Pioneer PL-10 was a 1970’s belt drive model, quite competent, but the specifications indicate that it’s no match for their direct drive models, or the Toshiba/Aurex SR-Q200. Here are the Pioneer specs: wow and flutter less than 0.1% WRMS, rumble -47dB, weight 7.5kg. So the only area where it could be considered slightly better than the Aurex SR-Q200 is in a slightly heavier weight. The performance of the Aurex should be much better, and it should sound better (it's almost 30dB quieter, which is about 8 times quieter, as we hear sound).
Based on the limited specs that I have shown, and my guess of the likely performance of the elusive Technics SL-19, based on many other Technics belt drive models, I’d put their quality, as:
Aurex SR-Q200 (best)
Technics SL-19 (an informed guess)
Pioneer PL-10
However, as Pioneer were one of the first to offer really good quality hi-fi turntables at affordable prices, don't discount it as rubbish and throw it away. If you don't want to keep it, there will be plenty of buyers on used markets. The PL-10 was one of their early models from the 1970’s, and really helped make the reputation of Japanese manufacturers of hi-fi equipment. It’s also a very simple turntable, with no electronics, so people understand them, and are keen to buy them still. All it needs to keep on going for years is simple maintenance (oiling and belt replacement), and it will probably still be going 40 years from now!