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Linn LP12......That good??

I have an Ariston RD80 (very good) and a Thorens TD 160, also very good.
How good are the Linn Lp12 tt's??
I am always looking for the best most impressive sound.
I will have to sell the Ariston/Thorens if i buy the Linn because i will not need 3 turntables!
The Ariston almost looks like the Linn by the way.
So how great are the Linn's and what is the best combination to buy?
Thanks!
x1884
stringreen's avatar
stringreen
5,112 posts
 
I had an LP12 in my house for about 2 years....I probably spent 22 months adjusting it.
daveyf's avatar
daveyf
1,174 posts
 
stringreen, Pity that you did not avail yourself of a good set up tech! That would have resulted in a much better sounding table and one that wouldn't have gone out of adjustment.
Like so many posters who have had a less than sterling result from their LP12, you want to blame the table, instead of your inability to maximize the table...



bdp24's avatar
bdp24
4,908 posts
 
The LP12 was, in the opinion of some, nothing more than a glamourized Acoustic Research XA. A better bearing and superior machining, but their over-all design basically the same. From a design viewpoint, they are in fact almost identical. Linn used it’s claim of the LP12 "playing tunes better" (rather than sounding better in purely sonic terms)---impossible to quantify---as their rational for making the case of it being superior to all other tables.
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
4,908 posts
 

Oops, I meant to say glorified, not glamourized. My first good table was the AR XA, and I watched Brooks Berdan set up a few LP12's. He wasn't too impressed with it, feeling, as did Peter Moncrieff of IAR, that the Oracle Delphi was a far better table. Brooks came up with a mod for the Delphi, adding mass at one specific location on the bottom of it's floating sub-chassis in order to make optimizing it's suspension a snap.

Brooks was a race car designer in his younger days, and knew a lot about suspensions, spring rates, and moving mass, and their interactions. He switched allegiance to the higher mass VPI HW-19 when it was introduced, mounting many, many Eminent Technology air-bearing arms on that table. Many Linn owners still swear by their LP12's, particularly in terms of it's abilities at playing music, not just making sound. 

bimasta's avatar
bimasta
158 posts
 
The most ardent Linn defenders seem to be Linn owners. Are they defending their taste and investment, or the turntable? I'm an ex-Linn owner so I know it well; I was glad to be rid of it, though I kept an Ittok.
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