Who owned or owns a Linn LP12?

In the 1980s according to the UK hifi press you were nobody unless you owned a Linn Sondek Turntable. The write ups I read about that deck made it sound like heaven on earth. I liked it's looks especially the Linn Ittok tonearm.

In 1987 I auditioned one and shock horror I didn't like it. IMHO it had bloated bass (it might have been properly set up)
I bought a Roksan Xerxes instead (loved it!) & that lasted for 10 years until the power supply stopped working & they claimed it could not be repaired!!!

I sold off the Xerxes out of frustration used a Dual 505 to tied me over & I bought my friends Michell Gyrodec in 2000. I still use it . I should have bought one in the first place but I was worried it's looks were a gimmick. How wrong I was!!!

Anyway I did hear a Sondek sound good once or twice but not mind blowing at some exhibitions but was shocked when I heard one sound appalling at an exhibition and the exhibitor was Linn themselves!

I noticed that a lot of people sell off their Linn Turntables 2nd hand . Was it just hype? I may have not heard one set up properly. Please tell me about your Linn LP12 experiences good or bad & if you own one tell me what I'm missing. Keep it light & have some fun.

 

I think cha cha here does and he loved it's. I've heard it and it sounded fab to me.

 

Have had several.
Good starter table, no big problems or deficiencies. Only a few steps down from the really great tables.

 

I've heard them. In their basic incarnation they are a nice table that produce a nice involving sound. There are tons of upgrades which take the color and operating quirks out, but they get real expensive real fast. A lot of people prefer to spend $6k on a VPI or Clearaudio setup which gets you the same performance of $12k from Linn. I'd love to have one.

 

I don't have a Linn LP12, but I have an early Ariston RD11S. I love it. I use an Audiomods tonearm and Music Hall speed controller box, which lets me fine tune the speed and switch between 33 and 45 with the push of a button. I will say that setting it up properly is absolutely critical, and it doesn't have to be far out of whack to go from sounding great to sounding mediocre to sounding horrible. Set up properly I can jump up and down next to it without any effect. A little bit out and just getting off the couch 15 feet away will make the record skip. I even had it skip when my cat jumped down.

The first time I set it up it took about 4 hours. Now when it needs it (maybe once a year or after working on it) it takes less than an hour. In addition to loving the rich musical sound, I have measured its specs and they are very, very good, about on par with a Rega P9 and the top-of-the-line VPI Classic. I got my Ariston (without arm or speed controller) for $200, so it's hard to complain. Add $500 for the Audiomods kit and $200 for the speed box, and it's hard to beat for the money. I happily stopped my table/arm upgrading when I hit this point. Cartridges is another matter...

 

I want one. Badly. But I know it would probably not be the end all for me. Plus the price of all those upgrades....
One day I'll join the flat earthers.

 

I never owned one but I auditioned a couple. I feel confident that Sound By Singer had it correctly set up.

Linn was one of the first companies to really stress pace, timing and rhythm. I liked the sound but not enough to buy it. Yes it was involving and it had my foot tapping but it was pretty similar to my Thorens.

 

I have one I bought on the Internet in 1993. I think it's great.

 

I think there's a nice refurbished one at Seattle's Hawthorne Stereo for around $1700 or so. Was tempted but went with a new Rega rp6 instead. Love the simplicity

 

I've had a couple of them over the years.

It is unnecessarily difficult to set up, it is not especially durable and most of all it is very overpriced.

It does sound good when set up right but so do a lot of other products, in my opinion the Michell Gyrodec is a better set up all around.

One thing it is not is original. It is pretty much a copy of the Ariston.

The bearing on the Cirkus models is very good but the pre-Cirkus bearing was not very good.

Linn's documentation to the owner is crummy because they want you to go back to the dealer all the time. I like to do stuff myself. There is a good amount of third party literature on the net but not in a comprehensive format.

If you buy one, figuring out exactly what you have is not easy because of the huge changes that have been made over the decades.

The English were on the forefront of hi-fi with Quad and Leak and the Partridge transformers and Tannoy drivers, but the Naim and Linn era is really when they went off the rails. The English press worshipped them and Captain Catchfire instead of blasting them and that has turned a lot of us off English hi fi permanently.

 

As Mazzy has mentioned, I've had an LP12 since 1989. It's got a great groove to it and really swings but it's really finicky to set up and is really sensitive to footfalls etc. I've updated it continually over the years but the latest upgrades are so crazy expensive I've stopped. I'm thinking about possibly getting something different but auditioning turntables at home unfortunately is a thing of the past. I've just found a guy in the Bay Area where I live that is supposed to be good tuning these up. I may just bring it to him and see what he can do.
I 'll say this for the Linn- music is never boring on it - it cooks.

 

Back in the early and mid-eighties here in the UK it was all about the LP12, to suggest other decks were better was almost heresy, I heard many, many Linns in various set ups and locations, they were good in some ways, very "Hi-Fi", but not for me. In the early eighties I thought the Pink Triangle sounded much, much better, unfortunately the two people I knew who owned them told me not to buy one because of the various reliability problems. Then the Roksan Xerxes was launched and for many of us who just didn't like the Linn sound it was salvation, at least until my top plate warped. Like the OP I then migrated to Michell and couldn't be happier, I wouldn't swap my Orbe for the most highly specified Linn there is.

Thirty plus years later what really annoys me is that I feel those of us in the UK were robbed of information, balanced opinion and the chance to discover so many interesting and great sounding decks, the dominance of Linn in magazines and shops meant few of us got to see and hear high end Japanese direct drives, British JBEs and numerous high end offerings from elsewhere, even the early Gyrodec was a rare and exotic beast. Linn was like a Hi-Fi cult, I went along to a couple of their brainwashing events, sorry, I mean presentations at Hi Fi shows, I still don't get why so many people swallowed the Linn view, hook, line and sinker, the British Hi-Fi press have a lot to answer for from back then.

If the Linn sound is what you are looking for then great, buy one and enjoy it, there are some great used buys although the new prices are insane, but please let's not go back to the early 1980s and pretend that the Linn is the greatest deck in the world.

To answer the question I have owned a couple and sold them straight away, one good thing about Linns is they still sell like hot cakes.

 

I think the fact that I was a voracious consumer of UK hi-fi magazines through the 80s yet just had to Google JBE to see what it was proves your point.

http://www.hifinews.co.uk/news/article/jbe-series-3--vintage/9400

 

I agree with this part of your commentary. I have had a couple and have serviced quite a few. They can sound very good but they are finicky and are never really great due to the limitations of the design. The great number and expense of upgrades to the original is staggering.

I can't agree with the idea that Linn and Naim products were any reason for the music lover's of the world to become disenchanted with UK hi-fi in general. You must be expression an opinion about their exclusivity, marketing, closed-loop upgrade paths, etc rather than suggesting that they did not produce as excellent a product as many other audio companies. That distinction of criticism of philosophies vs performance might be lost on some reading this. I have had quite a bit of both brands products come through here and all of it was better than average and some were excellent, if not everyone's cup of tea.
-Bill

 

I had one and loved it! It was setup by the local Linn expert who now has his own audio shop. THE REASON that I sold mine was that, I couldn't afford or even hope to afford the
upgrades that started with the keel et al. I decided that the company was not interested in providing a "reasonably" priced upgrade path for my income group. Additionally, I felt at the same time that I needed a table that I could maintain and service myself, and that had an upgrade path that I could afford.

M~

 

I bought one in 1983 - and I still have it in storage in Australia, but it has not been used for 15 years. It was a significant upgrade from the Thorens TD-160 I owned, and that was what I was looking for. I did read the UK magazines at that time (along with a subscription to TAS) and I was probably sucked in by the "cult" status of the turntable that dominated the UK magazines; but it lived up to the hype in my system and it gave me endless pleasure. One day I will get it out and put it back in service.

 

There's a lot of exaggeration in this thread. I don't buy into the cult nonsense. It's called marketing. IBM does it, Coke does it too, nothing new here. It is Marketing 101 to tell people you have a great product and hope that they buy it. If you listen and don't like it or think something else offers a better value, then go with the other product(s). At the same time I don't suggest that you buy a audiophile LP if you feel your $2 thrift shop album sounds fine, I also don't suggest you go into debt over a new car or dining room set if something cheaper does what you need.

As for upgrades, those are an option. Plenty of people run old spec LP12s. Who said you need to buy upgrades merely because they get offered? That's the advantage of the LP12, if you want to upgrade you can, if you don't want to or can't afford the upgrades then don't do it or do it a year of two from now when you are in better financial shape. VPI and Rega have plenty of upgrades and after market tweaks as well.

About the only thing I agree with is that the LP12 has many competitors who have upped the game. I do believe that there are many superior turntables available these days. Luckily an LP12 has enough name recognition that you can sell it used and then buy a replacement.

Scott

 

Rega hardly has any upgrades a few third party yes but a white belt for an RP 6 is about it from the manufacturer

 

Used to own a LP-12/Valhalla/Ittok. Excellent but very finicky. Not very well suited to my needs. It got replaced later by a Technics SP-25/Audio-Technica ATP 16-T/Stanton 681 EEE combo in a custom plinth. Which was a better option for me. I got my LP-12 cheap. It had a bad Valhalla PSU. I repaired it and later built a Valhalla clone to replace it.

 

Well as someone who read most of the UK Hi Fi publications of the time, regularly visited Hi Fi shops, more than once a week, had several Linn owning friends and attended Hi Fi shows and the special Linn events that might as well have been called indoctrination sessions I can say there were definitely elements in common with a cult. It's not like now where you get particular groups who might believe that the SL1210 is the best deck ever or idler drives rule and have fora etc. to promote their views, the Linn view was the UK Hi Fi orthodoxy and to question any part of it was to face ridicule in some circles, it wasn't just the LP12, it was an entire Linn system, Linn's sound was right and all others were wrong, a view supported by most of the Hi Fi press seemingly without question. Thirty years later it's hard to imagine the status Linn had in the UK, for whatever reason they were too often seen as the ONLY high end deck. Was it marketing, yes, of course it was and rather brilliant at that, but I sure wish we'd had a free and open Hi Fi press and more dealers not afraid to risk losing their Linn accounts.

 

"Rega hardly has any upgrades a few third party yes but a white belt for an RP 6 is about it from the manufacturer"

+++++++++++++++++++

Linn has taken the upgrade path further than most companies and after market LP12 products are more numerous than other brands, but Linn is hardly alone.

Rega does have some upgrades including this power supply, which can also be used with the RP6,

http://www.rega.co.uk/tt-psu.html
There are many more though after market upgrades for Regas,

http://www.acrylteller.com/ACRYLIC-PLATTER-UPGRADE-for-Rega-RP6-turntable
and also these, which also has some platter & sub platter upgrades,

http://www.decoaudio.com/deco_audio_rega_turntable_upgrades.html

Even VPI offers several upgrades to their models,

http://www.elusivedisc.com/VPI-Turntable-Upgrade-Store/products/966/

And Technics turntables,

http://www.originlive.com/technics-1200-1210-series-power-supply-2.html

Scott

 

Of course Regs has a few upgrades especially in the third party world. But not ongoing company upgrades. In fact Rega rather have you just use the cart that comes with their rigs. That's why they are perfect for people like me who pretty much just want a bit better than just plug and play. I did upgrade to the White belt on my new RP6. And maybe later might go with the third party sub platter, but I really don't feel any urge and the music sounds wonderful to me already. I hear from my Linn friend here about the constant Linn upgrades. You dont have to buy them but I guess like some reissues of records, you feel left out if you don't..

 

Exactly - Scott in DC is unfamiliar with the scene.

 

Can I ask you why you do this - quoting a forum member's post and not saying anything yourself? I keep looking for your content.