When Ivor Tiefenbrun debuted the Linn turntable in 1973, he sent shock waves through the music world. The device quickly won favor among audiophiles due to its superior sonic qualities, among other attributes. Plus, it was purpose-built for modularity: Customers who bought an LP12 in the ’70s can still improve their machines with any of the more than 50 mechanical and electrical upgrades released over the past half century.
That legacy led former Apple design chief Jony Ive to contact Gilad Tiefenbrun, Linn’s current CEO and Ivor’s son, proposing a collaboration with Ive’s company, LoveFrom. The two firms teamed up to create a limited-edition record player in honor of Linn’s 50th anniversary.
While other high-end turntables can resemble kinetic sculptures, Linn’s Sondek LP12-50, only 250 of which will be made, is quiet, elegant, and understated—the same aesthetic that dates back to the original model. Vinyl is the antithesis of a streamed track: It’s a material, perishable good that requires care and maintenance. Correspondingly, the LP12 is a thing of moving parts, a piece of mechanical engineering made by hand in Linn’s facility in Glasgow, Scotland. Unlike mass-produced items made on assembly lines, an LP12 is the sole focus of a single craftsperson who assembles, tests, and packs a unit—a degree of attention reflected in the $60,000 price.
Product trainer and ambassador Gordon Inch describes Linn as an “engineering company that happens to make hi-fi.” Here, he guides us through each step that goes into bringing its signature product to life.
-
1. Bedrok Shaping
Image Credit: Greg White A record player is only as good as its plinth, so Linn developed a material called Bedrok to make the bases for this limited edition. It begins life as sheets of beechwood, which are compressed until they form a solid, stable block. This slab is then machined to accommodate the remaining components. “The Bedrok’s job is to not resonate, to allow the sprung, suspended parts of the turntable to do their job,” Inch says.
-
2. Switching
Image Credit: Greg White One of Ive’s touches was a refashioned switch, which turns the device on and off and adjusts playback speed. While older versions look more like light switches, the new one is made on a lathe from solid aluminum and was designed to sit flush with the plinth. Instead of emitting a clean click, Ive’s version offers something like haptic feedback, similar to the experience of pressing and holding a phone’s touch screen.
-
3. Bearings on a Thrust Pad
Image Credit: Greg White Linn’s bearings—the components that allow the turntable platter to spin smoothly—are so central to the LP12’s performance that the company logo is a line drawing of one. The newest version, called the Karousel, is made in-house from tough stainless steel and sits on a highly polished base, called the thrust pad, crafted from high-carbon steel.
-
4. Platter Production
Image Credit: Greg White The platter, on which the vinyl sits and spins, is composed of two pieces, each made from a heavy zinc alloy called Zamak. The material’s weight helps keep the record stable while the module’s dual components act like a firebreak: Resonance in one piece of the platter is canceled out by the minute interplay between the two. Its precision construction helps to ensure absolute flatness, because, according to Inch, even a small tilt in the record “can change the speed of the reading.”
-
5. Laser Etching
Image Credit: Greg White In a long-standing Linn tradition, the name of the person who crafts the turntable is applied to the finished model via a laser-etched plaque. Here, the plate also includes details about the collaboration with LoveFrom, plus its edition number.
-
6. Tonearm Intensity
Image Credit: Greg White Perhaps the most labor-intensive component is the tonearm, which suspends the stylus over the record. It takes three days to make a batch of six such elements, requiring a level of precision and hand-eye coordination that Inch says “can drive some people crazy.” There are 74 individual parts, some as small as one or two millimeters.
-
7. Motor-Control Engineering
Image Credit: Greg White Linn is one of the few audio companies able to produce its electronics in-house. The Radikal motor-control unit is engineered to maintain an iron grip on the platter’s rotation speed. It gathers data from optical sensors and an onboard tachometer to keep the platters spinning at exactly 33.3333 revolutions per minute (or 45 rpm for a 45). Even tiny inconsistencies in the speed can drastically affect the way the record sounds.
-
8. Home Installation
Image Credit: Greg White The individual elements are so sensitive that the device isn’t shipped fully assembled. Here, Inch performs the final build, a process usually left to the specially trained trade partners who handle home installations.
-
9. Completion
Image Credit: Greg White The finished product, ready to play music—and, when the time comes, to be bequeathed to your kids. Inch recalls once meeting the third-generation owner of an LP12 in Seattle, whose player was replete with scratches and chips and a big chunk of missing wood. Asked why he’d kept it for so long, the customer replied, “The whole story of my childhood is in this deck.”