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

[RobHolt]

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.

If that is your view you clearly don't get what was happening back then.

Have you actually read the press from the day?

As for the getting over it stuff and growing balls, not necessary and you should perhaps stop over-reacting to what is an internet discussion on a controversial period in uk audio history. If you doubt this was the case you need to go and do as little research.
I could of course start a thread on the stupidity of the 80s audio tribalism and upload some of the claptrap doing the rounds at the time. Might help some with short memories or in denial.

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

Very much a UK issue Joe.

In fact this rather supports the opinion that the popularity of FE products in the uk was more spin and marketing than absolute quality.
When the products were exported to other markets, minus the heavy handed uk sales tactics, they make little impact.
If they really were God's gift to audio we'd have surely expected better.

 

[nando]

Please Rob.

 

[RobHolt]

Please Rob.

It might turn into the thread from hell though - :JOEL:

You will understand fully the appalling treatment afforded MF during those days in some of the popular audio press.
From uk companies the likes of Mission, Cyrus, Audiolab, Quad, anything Japanese and anything hailing from the USA was ripped to shreds in every issue.
Those were decent sized companies and managed to survive but others simply sank because were not part of or endorsed by the in-crowd.

 

[flatpopely]

Rob.

No offence meant, sorry.

Andrew.

 

[RobHolt]

Andrew,

None taken - as i say, this a discussion about a period of history 25 years ago

 

[lindsayt]

It's rather unfair to compare the new price of the Linn with the second hand value of the EMT...

Tony, I wasn't comparing the new price of the Linn against the second hand value of the EMT.

I was comparing the price I spent on the EMT against the price Flatpopely had paid for his LP12 bits / 2nd hand value of the older bits. IE the price that anyone would typically have had to pay to recreate the record players used at that bake-off. I think that this is entirely fair as a bit of consumer advice in today's global new and 2nd hand hi-fi market.

Let's tot them up:

Linn Radikal £2500 new - very difficult to find 2nd hand in July 2009.
Linn Ittok £400ish 2nd hand for one in top nick
ESC Troika £250 2nd hand plus £250 for retip
LP12 base unit £400 ish 2nd hand
LP12 new plinth??? £300??
That's £4100ish
Add the Rubikon used for this years bake-off at £1250 - none available 2nd hand yet - and we're up to £5350



EMT 930 £1929 2nd hand
Denon DL103 £80 new
EMT idler wheel £100 new
EMT plinth corner pads plus anti skate weight £50 new
Plywood, threaded rod nuts and washers for crappy home-made plinth £35 new
That's about £2300
My EMT also came with a 155st phono amp (not used at the bake-off) - worth about £600 2nd hand


BTW in terms of sound quality per pound spent, my EMT 930 is the 2nd best turntable in my house.

 

[Richard Dunn]

My PL-71 cost me £65 full stop, no mods, no nothing cost you a lot more now as people have realised they are good.

Though my 2nd hand SPU Gold cost me £400.

 

[lindsayt]

My PL-71 cost me £65 full stop, no mods, no nothing cost you a lot more now as people have realised they are good.

Though my 2nd hand SPU Gold cost me £400.

I'd love to attend a bake-off where your £465 (£700 if I wanted to buy the same thing) PL71 / SPU was compared against an LP12SE or a near LP12SE or a partial LP12SE.

 

[RobHolt]

Second hand prices of Pl71s are rocketing.

Owing to fond teenage memories of a JVC QL7 I'm looking for one of those at the moment. The old one I had stashed in the shed is damaged beyond salvation but it has the biscuit barrel type motor and controller type construction (like Denon DD) so you can easily build them into better plinths.

But........ they are rubbish....... horrid things........ bad wow an flutter....... blow up regularly etc....... <he says's trying to keep the prices down >

 

[Joe Petrik]

Rob,

In fact this rather supports the opinion that the popularity of FE products in the uk was more spin and marketing than absolute quality.

When the products were exported to other markets, minus the heavy handed uk sales tactics, they make little impact.

If they really were God's gift to audio we'd have surely expected better.

I still rate FE sources and electronics of the day, even though I've moved on to other kit. They certainly weren't crap.

I think the FE philosophy was let down by, for example, encouraging people to run an LP12, Ittok, Troika, 32.5, Hi-Cap and 135s into a pair of Kans. A good source is essential, and it cannot be done on the cheap if you're an analogue guy, but there's so much better out there than a pair of Kans.

Joe

 

[Richard Dunn]

I'd love to attend a bake-off where your £465 (£700 if I wanted to buy the same thing) PL71 / SPU was compared against an LP12SE or a near LP12SE or a partial LP12SE.

All we need is someone to have the gumption to bring one to the Halloween Bake-Off Show, as there will be 2 PL-71s there.

 

[Richard Dunn]

I could of course start a thread on the stupidity of the 80s audio tribalism and upload some of the claptrap doing the rounds at the time. Might help some with short memories or in denial.

Remember you were going to upload the stuff about the Linn v Ariston court case, I am looking forward to it, as I only have my memories.

 

[RobHolt]

Rob,


I still rate FE sources and electronics of the day, even though I've moved on to other kit. They certainly weren't crap.

I think the FE philosophy was let down by, for example, encouraging people to run an LP12, Ittok, Troika, 32.5, Hi-Cap and 135s into a pair of Kans. A good source is essential, and it cannot be done on the cheap if you're an analogue guy, but there's so much better out there than a pair of Kans.

Joe

Yes it was just OTT.

I bought my first LP12 in 1986 and used it for ten years.
Enjoyed it greatly and bought hundreds of LPs to play on it.
However i had bought heavily into the philosophy and was myself biased against lots of kit.

Winding back a decade I'd first heard the LP12 alongside a Rega, a Thorens 160 and a JVC highish-end DD. Attended the dem with my Grandfather and we left the shop with the JVC. It still sits rusting in garden shed.
The dealer wasn't pro Linn, the press hadn't yet gone mad and as a youngster with no appreciable conditioning on what was best, we chose the best sound on the day.

It was much harder to do this a decade later. The Japanese, fed up with being routinely savaged in the press, stopped importing their best products into the uk because dealers wouldn't stock them. People read magazines and went into shops saying 'have you got a whatever TT or amplifier please' based on reviews.
You couldn't easily hear the best non FE imported kit because it simply wasn't here or on dem.

That's where we lost out most IMO.

When i hear a really good direct drive today, or a superb Sansui or Technics high-end amplifier, or the big monitor speakers that were pushed aside, it makes me angry.
Effectively, lots of people (me included) were pushed off down a road that meant so much great kit passed us by.

Thank goodness for Ebay!

 

[RobHolt]

Remember you were going to upload the stuff about the Linn v Ariston court case, I am looking forward to it, as I only have my memories.

I shall sit down tonight with a nice glass of wine, listening to the David Jacobs Collection on Radio 2 and thumb the magazines for you

Should have put it aside at the time.

 

[Paul Ranson]

Some objective reviewing might be interesting.

My recollection of the 80s is that from 1982 onwards there was The Flat Response and its successor on the Linn Naim axis. The rest of the media were Absolute Sounds oriented. A new Koetsu on the front of HFA every other month, Apogee after Apogee in HFN. Krells and ARCs everywhere. 'Flat Earth' was a minority corner.

Expensive Japanese stuff was cartridges and specialty stuff rather than turntables, amplfiers and speakers. But they owned the mass market until the mass market dried up.

Paul

 

[RobHolt]

Some objective reviewing might be interesting.

My recollection of the 80s is that from 1982 onwards there was The Flat Response and its successor on the Linn Naim axis. The rest of the media were Absolute Sounds oriented. A new Koetsu on the front of HFA every other month, Apogee after Apogee in HFN. Krells and ARCs everywhere. 'Flat Earth' was a minority corner.

Expensive Japanese stuff was cartridges and specialty stuff rather than turntables, amplfiers and speakers. But they owned the mass market until the mass market dried up.

Paul

Goes back much further than that Paul.

Popular Hi-Fi in the late 70s, Hi-Fi Answers was very pro Linn at the start of the 80s, then there were the closed shop dealers.

As an example of the worst excesses of the day, I think you have a very nice Technics SP10 these days?
Just about every audio magazine and most dealers would have told you to junk that and buy a Planar three. We'll you've heard one now as a Linn owner.
Was it a pile of junk or was it actually rather good?

Examples of strange goings-on abound from those days.
Chris Frankland's conversion was probably the most astonishing. Having done extensive listening tests of his Thorens TD124 against the LP12 he declares the 124 as superior. Then he goes to the Linn factory to have a look around, and one month later he's seen the light.
Another is the reviewer who described the popular Audiolab 8000A as so poor that he could barely listen to it - 'cacophony' was the term used IIRC.
He gave it 'Amplifier of the Year' award five years later after the flat earth magazines were dead.

It all stank more than a little.

 

[RobHolt]

Richard, this is the article from the period in Hi-Fi News, July 1978.
It follows the initial reporting in April 1978 but I don't have that issue.

 

[Noel Winters]

I go back a long way in this HIFI game of ours into the sixties. MY first try at High
Fidelity as it was called a Radiogram .IT was fitted out with a Garrard deck and some kind of arm but the thing that intrigued me most was the big add on the box
about this thing having something called Tweeters .I could not wait for it to be delivered .my first HIFI shock and i found it hard to beleive they sounded like Fried Eggs. They were sure no Magico. Noel W.

 

[Richard Dunn]

Richard, this is the article from the period in Hi-Fi News, July 1978.
It follows the initial reporting in April 1978 but I don't have that issue.

Seeing as Hamish spent a large percentage of his time pisshhed, it sounds like he went to the pub before the court Sad though it was the guy was flawed and ripe to be ripped off. Personally I think the patent office was daft to give any patent on that bearing to anyone as similar has been used before and after, so as far as I am concerned there is nothing unique about it. Linn never prosecuted or challenged anyone using a similar bearing so perhaps they knew they were on thin ice. The bearing uses a thrust plate that is obviously of high quality material and machined to close tolerance but I see absolutely no advantage over the other more common method of the spindle contacting a high quality ball bearing.

Anyway all history but it seems a bit strange for this article to be written so long after the original dispute and case.

 

[SCIDB]

Goes back much further than that Paul.

Popular Hi-Fi in the late 70s, Hi-Fi Answers was very pro Linn at the start of the 80s, then there were the closed shop dealers.

Hi Rob,

I can remember that as well. Popular hifi went that way in the late 70s and became more so when Chris Frankland became editor. Also in the late 70s, Paul Benson became editor of Hifi Answers and was a FE fan. But both of these editors got the boot in the early 80s.

There were a number of FE dealers who pushed Linn, Naim and certain other brands. They made good money of it. But it is not uncommon to find sales people pushing certain brands over others. If you can make money out of certain brands, you'll do it.

Hifi was falling down people's pecking order for purchases. We had a big recession with high unemployment in the early 80's. The hifi market (& music) market was shrinking. FE was a way that some shops made good money. FE or no FE, a number of shop & hifi businesses would have gone down the pan anyway.

As an example of the worst excesses of the day, I think you have a very nice Technics SP10 these days?
Just about every audio magazine and most dealers would have told you to junk that and buy a Planar three. We'll you've heard one now as a Linn owner.
Was it a pile of junk or was it actually rather good?

The Techanics SP10 wasn't cheap. There were alot more non-FE shops than there were FE shops. Even shops that sold Technics SP10, very few had them in.

Examples of strange goings-on abound from those days.
Chris Frankland's conversion was probably the most astonishing. Having done extensive listening tests of his Thorens TD124 against the LP12 he declares the 124 as superior. Then he goes to the Linn factory to have a look around, and one month later he's seen the light.
Another is the reviewer who described the popular Audiolab 8000A as so poor that he could barely listen to it - 'cacophony' was the term used IIRC.
He gave it 'Amplifier of the Year' award five years later after the flat earth magazines were dead.

It all stank more than a little.

I remember Chris Frankland not rating the LP12 as highly then changing his mind. I also read about a turntable shootout where someone said a JBE deck was best then in a retest the LP12 was deemed better.

Malcolm Steward has said on his website that the sample he got to review for Flat Response sounded poor but the later version he reviewed sounded alot better.

SCIDB