Over the years I have owned or used several other turntables that together with CD’s as an alternative source, have given me a more enlightened overview of what the Linn does and doesn’t do. Lets face it, by comparison the LP12 hardly looked like a definitive engineering statement at the time, with bits of fibreboard, self-tapping screws and a degree of voodoo required in setting it up. So I bought a Linn on the basis of its sound, but not without casting a resigned glance back at the precision engineered, beautifully machined Technics/Micro Seiki/Trio alternatives. What was less welcome was the accompanying narrow-minded arrogance adopted by many in the industry, an attitude that in this day and age is worse than useless, but sadly still pervades in some quarters. Move forward a couple of years to a time where I could consider buying a decent turntable, and the Linn / Naim philosophy was beginning to take hold and would in time form a divide in the audio community like no other, radically influencing (if not redefining) the hierarchy that applied to system building. While that first meeting was something of a culture shock, I will never forget the sheer passion and drive of the conversation, something that I had rarely encountered before relating to audio. The idea that he wouldn’t sell me an amp unless I bought an LP12 seemed just weird and I couldn’t get my head around the fact that his preamp didn’t have any tone controls. Julian Vereker, at first angrily dismissive having (correctly) surmised that I was a young impoverished student, proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon playing music and emphasising the importance of the turntable in a hi fi system, something of an alien concept to both myself and most other enthusiasts at the time. My first experience of this turntable occurred in 1977, having wandered into the shop front that was then the Naim factory.
After forty years of production there is very little to say about the Linn LP12 that hasn’t already been said, except perhaps that it must surely qualify for one of the longest standing production units in audio industry.