I have acquired a linn sondek lp 12 which i am going to add to my cyrus system comprising of a cdxt, dacxp plus psx-r's on both together with a pair of mono-x's. My initial instinct is to go for the cyrus phono stage which seems an obvious choice. Does anyone have this combo and how does it sound? Or is there an alternative phono stage which works better in this combo? What interconnects should I consider? All comments welcome. Thanks in anticipation. John
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 John.......Good choice in selecting the Linn. It is a top class source although the competition is now quite strong...It may be an old design but I've found that as ancillaries improve the sound of the LP12 just gets better and better......Was the turntable new or SH ?....If the latter, and it's been shipped directly to your home, it might be worth getting the Dealer to service it..It is possible to do it yourself if you can lay hands on the parts and a setup jig (the Audiotech table - which I use - is excellent, as it also doubles as a setup jig specifically for the LP12.) There is certainly plenty of network support such as http://www.n.mackie.btinternet.co.uk/linn/tlp12faq.html#linninfo if you are mechanically inclined and feeling energetic (!)..........Packaging of delicate items being shipped is vital. A friend of mine recently bought a Yamaha E800 DSP processor off E-Bay and excitedly opened the box only to find at switch on that it didn't work Transpired later when we removed the casing that 2 of the PCBs had snapped in two due to the unit being too loosely packed...................Are you planning to use an MM or MC cart ? MM's used to be relatively cheap but it's now worth stretching even to a budget MC such as the Denon 103. If you want to go higher (say £500-£1000) then it depends on the arm that's fitted to the LP12 and the current arm bearing condition? MMs are sometimes a false economy. My current MC is a staggering 18 yrs old and still sounds superb (although I'm not expecting it to survive much longer!) It has even been "dropped". My daughter's 4 yr old pal knocked the turntable off it's pedestal, dislodging the arm which wasn't fully restrained at the time. The cantilever must have been wedged in the gap between arm board at some point as I was lifting it back up, but the cartridge was undamaged..........In general though you should think of an MC as typically having a similar usable lifespan to thermionic valves - perhaps slightly greater, although it could last much longer subject to the wear on the tip..On the subject of phono stages there is a massive choice. Thankfully head amps like this tend to live in small boxes making borrowing and setting up that much easier. If it were me I'd borrow a selection from the Dealer to try out because your tastes and music may be quite different from someone else's. Also the resulting sound will stem from your own individual system and how well set up the turntable is? There are a number of free upgrades you can do to your Linn, easiest of which are to play it with the baseboard removed, and the Cover removed. If it already has a Ringmat you're "sorted". If not you should aim to relpace the old felt mat with one of these ASAP. At £70 you won't regret it........The only other (and possibly most important thing) to consider is a table to put it on rather than the top of a rack or even a shelf. This will depend on what your floor is made of. If solid composition I'd go for the table. If floorboards shelf mounting would be preferable. The shelf chosen should be absolutely rigid with no flexure when you apply your weight to it - otherwise this extra compliance interacts with the suspension resonant frequency and changes the sound for the worse................Hope this is helpful.Kind regards,Bill.
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Cheers Bill, you have been very helpful and I will take your comments on board. The unit is SH about 20 years old so I'll be getting down to the dealer for a service as I am not the most mechanically inclined of creatures! It has an ittok arm fitted but again don't know how it has stood up over the years no doubt the dealer can check this out. John
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Heh heh! So it's even younger than mine, John !  Although when it crashed (12 yrs ago) my turntable rear feet dropped about 3/4 of an inch...it still makes me wonder about the Ittok arm bearings....the springs may just have saved it ! Can't argue with the sound though ...pure bliss doesn't even get close ! Kind regards, Bill.
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 Hmmm
I bought my LP12 in 1974 - it cost £9 more than the Thorens TD160 which played 45s (unlike the Linn). It was originally fitted with a Grace 707 arm and a Supex SD900 and over the years replaced the arm and cartridges - currently Ekos with Arkiva. One of my children decided to "investigate" the turntable a couple of years back - this resulted in an insurance claim for a new cartridge - he snapped the cantilever on the the Arkiv. Apart from that accident, each moving coil cartridge lasted for years - the Supex was replaced after 6 years with a Linn Asak which lasted about 6 years followed by a Linn Asaka (4 years) and then a Linn Troika (7 years). MC cartridges are durable and much more musical than MC cartridges.
My LP12 is a basic model without anything apart from Nirvana and Valhalla and the Linn dealer who installed the Arkiva also checked the suspension, etc. set up and told me that it sounded as good as the latest, all-singing, all-dancing version of the deck. I insisted on auditioning it against a current deck and it is true that there were slight differences in presentation with the new deck sounding slightly leaner and faster - but I repeat, the differences were minimal.
So, a 20 year old deck, if set up properly, should sound wonderful. Enjoy it!
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Julian, Sounds as if you have had singularly bad luck with your carts. My current cartridge's predecessor (Asak) lasted about 7 years before one of the gold wires snapped leaving me minus a channel. Considering that the current one (AsakA) has been "dropped on it's stylus from a great height" it's remarkable that it is now actually coming up for 19 yrs of age and still sounds excellent. My main concern now is the condition of the diamond, as I won't be doing my collection any favours by prolonging it's service, but hard to believe that I'm about to give up on a working cartridge... I also share your valhalla'd philosophy in that I voted with my ears and retained the old. However...there is a new board called the Hercules II, made in China under licence from Stamford Audio (and there is an outboard version of it too). Very economically priced. Rather than do an immediate replacement I see this as a possible repair/replacement for a failed, ageing PSU board as it is a straightforward transplant. Kind regards, Bill.
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No - not bad luck - apart from the child wrecking the Arkiv (which, incidentally, was the least convincing of the bunch). None of its predecessors were worn out - I just fancied a change on every occasion - sometimes because of an arm change - I had an Ittok between the Grace and Ekos - and sometimes because of changes elsewhere in the system. I sold the Grace/Supex to a friend who is still using them (30 odd years later) on a Thorens TD150 - the Supex now has a Van den Hul stylus.
Julian
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So you are currently using an Ekos Julian - can't see you upgrading this for a while !  I'm still using the Ittok LVII which replaced a Syrinx PU2. One of Scott Strachan's highly unusual brainchildren, the PU2 looked much longer than the usual tonearm as the rod extended beyond the cartridge. Equipped with massive staggered bearings (an original idea to achieve "split inertia") the cartridge mounting was the feature that really made the eyes water. One could always tell when a cart had been mounted in a PU2 because it literally bent the cart around the arm tube to achieve an intimate mechanical interface. As a result the cart always ended up with a diagonal groove across the back - almost unusable in any other tonearm. Fantastic tonearm though...the deep bass characteristic and tunefulness of the Syrinx are among my enduring memories of it.... Kind regards, Bill.
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To be fair, I don't actually play vinyl all that often - I have been putting my collection onto CD (there's a separate thread on another forum on this site) and tend to listen to that these days - much more convenient and since most of my listening is "non-critical" (i.e. quiet because of the dictates of my wife and children), CD fits the bill fine.
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Julian...I understand your situation...however....just so the public don't get the wrong idea ...... I should remind them that CD is a "fast food" musical medium...... Anything rendered with CD's 44.1Khz sampling rate (whether upsampled or not) is low resolution........ Even the humble domestic analogue tape recorders of yesteryear used a "sampling rate" of 120KHz (Bias Frequency) which is sinusoidal i.e. what the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem was actually based on, rather than squarewaves......... As you can see this sampling frequency is almost 3 times as high as CD putting it on a par with much higher - say professional - standards?..... Analogue tape recording also has no need for "Bits", as amplitude is taken care of naturally....... In fact analog recording theoretically has no limits other than the physical/electrical/magnetic limits of the media involved. There is the basic issue of noise caused by tape sliding past the heads - popularly known as tape hiss - and there is magnetic saturation, but in professional situations the range expanders they used rendered tape hiss inaudible (not my preferred option - I'd rather hear the tape hiss and not tamper with signals by using active filters - but this is a minor grievance considering the quality of the end result). .................. You may even have some vinyl albums that were mastered by a band in a basement using their own Revox or Studer semi-professional machines? It's a sign of vinyl's quality that it even captures the tape hiss faithfully!To cap it all -- In 2007 I remember reading somewhere that "US Hometheater & Hifi magazine" established CD as the worst performing medium of all time against an array of other formats e.g. vinyl, SACD, DVD-Audio etc.Even Upsampling is a forlorn hope as we cannot increase the volume of raw data the CD possessed in the first place. It's inadequacies are there to stay.....perfectly...and forever. ........ Kind regards, Bill.
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Having said all this...I do encourage aspiring music collectors to continue buying CD and support the recording Business/Artistes....just do not ditch your vinyl as the loss will be beyond computation.
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While everything you say is true, Bill, I _am_ ditching (well, selling on eBay actually) my vinyl. My ears are rapidly approaching their sixth decade and I suspect they are no longer capable of resolving the differences between analogue and digital.
So I am digitising my vinyl collection and selling the vinyl (for silly money sometimes - I got over 90 quid for a Joan Baez album) and eventually will sell the LP12 too.
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Not a problem Julian, sounds like you've been a faithful warrior for vinyl and have earned your retirement! As one story ends another begins. A friend at work recently acquired one from E-Bay and can't stop waxing lyrical about it. He is a real collector and generously lends stacks of vinyl. It's nice to see a happy man !!! (2 X happy men !!) Kind regards, Bill.
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Hello Bill,it would be interesting to compare the Linn LP12 with my Rock just to see which has the edge,i once compared my Rock with a mates Mitchel Gyrodeck,but couldnt really tell the difference,apart from some classical on the Gyro sounded a tad brighter.That would make an interesting thread,the worlds top 10 turntables-arm-cartridge..............Dave
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Hi Dave, Yes....the wider world often describes the Linn as being on the colourful side of neutral these days. Adding a Ringmat and removing the baseboard has done much to improve this but the LP12 certainly isn't the "Flavour-of-the-Month/Year/Decade" that it once was! I try to listen to as many turntables as possible. The last three I've auditioned were the Avid Acutus, the Well Tempered, and the Clearaudio Master Ref with linear tracking arm. What surprised me about the Well-tempered was it's defiance of all the rules. It was very unfussy both in terms of support and setup.. To add insult to injury it even used interchangeable headshells! (so much for the Closed Loop Principle!) The Avid just shaded it though I think. On Saint Saens, the Clearaudio Master Ref rendered concert hall organ as deeply and impressively as anything I've ever heard. Watch out with warped discs on this one though, as the tonearm length is less than your thumb! (At £12K...a bit expensive...) What I'd really like is a turntable that can either accommodate a 12" arm and/or is easier to setup than the Linn. Current shortlist is the Kuzma Stabi Reference and the VPI TNT. Kind regards, Bill.
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Julian...£90 for a Joan Baez album(!!!) not bad... You will be able to retire ! . Cheers, Bill.
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If you had a choice of a rega RB300 and a Syrinx PU@ which one would any of you choose?
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Hi P.A., Welcome to the Forum A new Rega RB300 would be my choice over a used, and probably worn, PU2. Distorting the cartridge body was never the best idea, although it may have been reasonable theory from a resonance/coupling point of view! Scott Strachan was renowned for his outside-the-box ideas. But if you are determined here's a more recent review.... http://www.hi-fiworld.co.uk/hfw/oldeworldehtml/syrinxarm.html The more recent Syrinx PU3 was more cartridge friendly and may be worthy of consideration.... With either of these arms at the very least you would end up with a hifi classic.... Kind regards, Bill.
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