Linn - love it /hate it/don't care I'll argue anyway thread!

Yup, Betamax ran faster and used thicker tape to counter stretch. I used to work with the boss of Ampex... Phillips 2000 was both higher quality, with longer run times and reversable tapes- that never even got off the ground due to bad marketing- marketing includes price setting.

It's the same with bluray and that other hires format, it's always been the same way, brands trying to monopolise product categories and technology channels.

I imagine somewhere there are video technicians as resentful as Richard.....

 

Someone told me that the first listen to your new gear will always be the best .this i think i have proved to myself as i am still playing my ThorensTD150 .If i had bought a
Linn maybe i would still be listening to the Linn and be happy in the fact that i had
bought the best.I wonder if a lot of us are like me always a better T/T in the next Mag.
Richard would you say that this is what makes the Platter go round Noel.W.

 

I used to have a TD150, now a true bargain at the sub £100 they go for today.

In bought an LP12 as an upgrade, it was.

 

Ah, but that's just it, Noel. There's still a lot of people who think that the Linn turntable is the best.

But is it?

If it were the best, surely it would be the clear winner in forum bake-offs?

I can't think of a forum bake-off where the LP12 has been the clear winner. The usual result is that it's equaled or beaten by a cheaper turntable / arm / cartridge combination.


It also seems that every time that an LP12 fails to win a bake-off there's a break-out of excusitis - with the excuses ranging from the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous.

 

Lindsay, get a reality check please. I assume you are referring to the bake off you attended at my house?

 

and for those people who think it's the best it remains so.

I'm unaware of tranches of LP12 owners selling their decks after hearing other stuff at bakeoffs.

I can't think of any bake off where any one deck could have been marked as the absolute winner, no consensus has even been drawn about components at any bake off i've ever attended- has it with you?

LP12 owners can and do state the opinion that they believe the LP12 to be the best deck available, but it's only their opinion- that's all anyone can state.


For some reason people have a bee in their bonnet about the LP12.

it's just another deck, if you are so happy with yours why the need to belittle other peoples choices?

simon- happy sme user.

 

With good reason though IMO.
If you were a small company battling against the tide in the days when the LP12 and other flat earth products were held up as untouchable it cannot have been an easy or pleasant time.
Similarly if you look back at the damage done by press and dealer bias it doesn't look too pretty. We lost a lot of good kit and probably never saw the best that was enjoyed in other markets because manufacturers wouldn't bring it here.
That of course was part of a wider problem but to many the LP12 is a symbol of those times.

As I've said before many times, it is a perfectly good deck and clean used examples are very good value. It was simply never the unquestionable best as often stated.

 

Obviously there's two different ways you can look at it. Personally, I don't think Betamax stood a chance as VFM in the eyes of the consumer. Reducing speed reduced its competitive edge with little or no perceived benefit to consumers and distributors and ultimately, better performance isn't better if no one care or wants it;-)

 

No one cares or wants it because they don't get to see or experience it.

Heavy marketing and/or spin around the technically inferior product inevitably reduces exposure for the better products, which neatly brings us back on topic

 

Rob,

The audio market in the UK must have been very different from the one in Canada and I assume the U.S.

Most people here had never heard of Linn or Naim and had no idea what a flat earth was, so kit like LP12s, 32.5s, Hi-Caps, 250s and Briks sold — or didn't — based on their merits relative to what else you could buy.

Joe

 

Rob,

I certainly can't speak for everyone on the planet but I can speak for everyone in the USA. We saw *everything* Betamax and VHS could and couldn't do with our wonderful marketing systems in all forms of media, shopping malls and what the neighbors bought.

The masses are fickle about what they perceive as value and probably very different from you or me. Ultimate performance more often than not takes a backseat to features at least here in the states. Most folks here want "sizzle" not substance.

regards,

dave

 

This was exactly the case here in the US. Most of the audiophiles looked at an LP-12 or olive preamp, then glanced over at the Krell or Levinson and said "you've got to be kidding." I know I did but it was ARC, SAE, Luxman, Technics, Levinson and Crown back in the seventies;-)

 

I'm refering to:

the 2 bake-offs at Richard Dunn's house. There was one where Zener took his LP12 that was soundly beaten - following which he replaced his LP12 with a Nottingham and from his posts on ofm he's pleased that he did.

The Bake-off at Flatpopely's that I attended where his c£5000 LP12 had a better treble and upper midrange than my £2300 EMT 930 / Denon DL103, but my EMT had a better bass and lower midrange. The daft thing is that Flatpopely doesn't seem to accept that the EMT/103 had a better bass than his LP12. The difference was so clear that it came over on the needledrops that he made on the day. As per my previous post I think it's fair to say that my EMT 930 at least equaled Flatpopely's LP12.

The Bake-off at Flatpopely's this year where my understanding is that £1000 of Garrard was at least as good as the c£5000 LP12 - again in a swings and roundabouts kind of way.

My own bake-offs in my own house where my LP12/Lingo/Cirkus/Ittok LVIII/ESC Troika/T Kable/Sound Org stand has been beaten by an EMT 930, EMT 950, EMT 948, Technics 1210/OL modded Rega/Ortofon Bronze - with all of these tt's just plonked on the floor. In the case of my EMT TSD15 equipped 930 and 950, they beat or equal my LP12 in the following areas: bass, midrange, treble, dynamics, detail retrieval, focus, clarity, foot-tapping ability, pitch accuracy and stability, tunefulness. There is no sonic area where my LP12 beats my EMT's. This is a slightly unusual result in that all the bits of my LP12 would be worth about £1700 if sold off separately, whilst my EMT's are worth about £2250.

 

If you were a small company today battling against the stack em high sell em cheap competition you would be............well me and I'm not talking about the RubiKon. It's just business Robert! if you dont succeed, get over it FFS.
I still don't see what you mean by damage done by the press and dealer bias, they just reported and sold what they wanted to! Would you rather the UK hi fi industry not exist and we all by products from the far east?
I rather like ther way that the FE movement, not just NAIM and Linn, moved us away from the speaker is best.
To me the LP12 is a reminder of a superb time of my life and also plays music damn well! To those that see it as the anti-christ, get over it and grow a pair.

 

like or not, linn and naim, has a very devoted fans that no matter what anyone tries to reverse that devotion for the products such as theyy sell or own can change their minds, i personally, having sold them in retail since day one never like them, but that is my view persoanally, to each to their own, however he who made his name on a product that made him and his company world wide fame it is an insult to those who bought the t/t lp12, not only the t/t is inacurate on the speed, but to say in a famous newspaper that anyone who owns a turtable is thee train spotter of the hi-fi world, ironic or taking the piss, imo.

 

It's rather unfair to compare the new price of the Linn with the second hand value of the EMT. New the EMT was an astonishingly expensive machine, probably costing 20 times the price of a LP12 or LP12 type deck of it's time. Similarly if a 401 was made today it would cost an absolute fortune, no modern turntable manufacturer could even contemplate the countless bespoke castings than go into almost every part of these vintage turntables. You can get a nice second hand Linn for about £500 plus arm.

Tony.

 

Even for that money it is a joke when you can get a new Technics 1210 for less and 2nd hand for about £100. And most people haven't even explored the other 70's and 80's Japanese direct drives that were rejected because of the Linn / flat earth brainwash, many are astonishing value for money at 2nd hand prices. If you don't want Japanese then investigate the Dual direct drives, severely underated!

I really do not understand why anyone would waste their money on a new turntable, especially some of the thread drive monsters that seem to appear in the US and German markets.

At the moment the 2nd hand market is still undervalued even though prices have grown greatly in the last few year. 2nd hand will represent (probably already does) the *major* part of hi-fi sales as there is just so much around relative to the hobbies current per capita popularity share. Manufacturers will have to adjust to this as they cannot just keep putting up prices and milking the sheep as they are now dying off. The industry has to change, interesting times ahead.

Anyway I know I am biased as I heartily dislike the product the company and the man and feel the damage done by all three to the UK hi-fi industry will take years to flatten out, and I agree with Rob this is just the effect of Karma that is causing it, they reaped (or should that be raped) the industry and now they get what they sowed. For me one of the best entertainment possible in the next month would be to get every LP12 ever made, all in one pile for a good 5th November celebration.

 

i still have a technics sl 170 mk11 with sme 3009 in the box,

 

I have heard and setup many SL1210s, they are a good if unremarkable deck. I have never heard a souped up one though.

 

i had an original sl1200 when technics brought in to the market with out arm but with arm board fitted for sme tone arm 3009, it was super, but also loved my denon and luxman,