from rubber band to direct drive

[SteveTheShadow]

I'll tell you what I could never understand about the LP12, that was the bollocks talked about rigid closed loops, which were nothing of the sort.
Why did you have to bolt down the Ittok arm until your allen key bent when those stupid tiny woodscrews were used to attach the armboard to the subchassis?

Then we had the bloody felt mat. So you have a mat that doesn't suppport the record properly in the vertical direction, nor does it clamp the record in the rotational direction, meaning that in engineering terms, the record absolutely has to be skittering about under the stylus in direct proportion to the amplitude of the signal that the stylus is transcribing, thereby upsetting the tracking of the groove and blurring the fine detail. So why bolt your expensive moving coil into your rigid headshell with your stainless steel allen screws when everything under the stylus is flopping all over the place.

OK it was not only Linn who were guilty of using the abomination that is the felt mat, I'll give them that, but slippy felt mats and armboards attached with little woodscrews do not a rigid system make and given the way Ivor was always emphasising maximum information retrieval uber alles, it's just hard to take the philosophy seriously. There are so many engineering holes in it, it doesn't make any sense.
It's interesting that the 1973 LP12 came with a rubber mat and so did the original Rega Planars. Wonder why they decided to put a slippery interface between the stylus/record and platter and what they thought they were achieving by this.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Because it was cheaper and they could bullshit a reason.

[Alfi]

Completely agree with you Steve. It smacks of Ivor T's personal piss take of audiophiles. There is cetainly no logical explanation for Linn tight here and Linn sloppy there. Even they have finally realised the importance of doing away with the poxy pressed steel sub chassis and mdf arm-board and their once "carefully engineered lossy connection" but they still bullshit about the role of the felt mat in the LP12's "musicality" Ha!

I have experimented with the suspension, got nowhere but now I've finally done away with the springs and to my old ears it all sounds tighter and cleaner because it's not wobbling about.

Alfi.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Shock horror turning the LP12 into a proper turntable. I tell you we will be murdered in our beds

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

The posting style continues, but transferred now to TAS.

[Daniel Quinn]

Mr blackford . I appreciate your opinion but you need to put my posts in a time perspective. My comments on dsjr wax and wain over a period of months and even years . condensing them is a little unfair to me. All history is archived

[Lindsayt]

Stevetheshadow, I think there may be something in the principle of rigid loops. Or, rigid energy transfer to an energy sink. Relatively low compliance cartridge in a rigid arm with very high quality bearings, mounted on a rigid chassis that's either heavy or on a rigid support on a rigid wall or floor. The record players that I've liked the most have tended to follow that pattern. As you quite rightly point out, the LP12 is not particularly good at the energy transfer thing.


Ivor T was a master of the art of reverse engineering marketing. Take every feature of the LP12 - good, bad and indifferent - and talk about it in a way that makes this feature seem THE BEST way of doing things. Any alternative approaches were discussed in a way to make them seem inferior to the LP12 way.


The 21st century hi-fi forum backlash against the LP12 is because it was marketed as "The Best Turntable in the World." It isn't and it never has been - as more and more former LP12 owners can attest.

[Alfi]

Shock horror turning the LP12 into a proper turntable. I tell you we will be murdered in our beds

Surely only if we succeed in converting the blinkered. I'm working on that, so I guess I'd better get some good bodyguards enlisted before it's too late.

Alfi.

[tomblackford]

Mr blackford . I appreciate your opinion but you need to put my posts in a time perspective. My comments on dsjr wax and wain over a period of months and even years . condensing them is a little unfair to me. All history is archived

Appreciated. As mentioned previously, let's all move on.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

BTW I am not saying I think that is one of the best arms, I am sure you could throw money at it and get better, but you have it and it is good so now find a cart to match it. Looking at musical ability not hi-fi ability for MC I would go for a Denon 103. Yes compared with modern carts it could look crude, but it really plays music in that headshell of yours. MM I am not so sure what I would choose, personally I would enjoy myself with eBay bargains and try some of the medium to lowish compliance carts. The arm *looks* medium mass as is my arm on the PL71, and in that case I am tracking an Empire 1000GT at less than a gram with no problems at all, so you might find the same for that arm. Enjoy the process, buy second hand and sell on and get experience of what works. That is what I did with the PL71.