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LP12 makes front cover of Stereophile

Had the fluted with black skirt for 30+ years. Long gone now.

This is what I call a pretty turntable..


bergmann_magne_8_1920x1280.jpg
 
It has clean lines and probably performs exceptionally well, but alas it doesn't float my boat.
 
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Lovely arm, clean lines etc etc.

Sadly this doesn't do the aesthetic for me either. I'm a funny old bugger, I also detest the look of carbon fibre so the Naiad's also not for me - not that I could justify the asking price for that!
 
Same here, just home from work and signed in, what did I got to first?, this video,
and I’ve watched it quite a lot last night too. :rolleyes::D
 
i get the print subscription of stereophile and I showed my wife the cover and asked "How much do you think this costs?"

She knew the answer would be unbelievable and couldn't begin to answer.
 
..that bit where you say "I do actually like the noise the LP12 makes" is my problem with it. Haven't read the Sterophile article but my guess is they like it because it has stopped doing the noise the LP12 used to make.

I would think so. While the LP12 has an underlying character, there are so many options, parts and upgrades there are a huge variety of possible sounds out of the thing. And while I'm sure the flashy new ones sound great in hi-fi terms I still enjoy a bit of the warmth and bounce of old.
 
I would think so. While the LP12 has an underlying character, there are so many options, parts and upgrades there are a huge variety of possible sounds out of the thing. And while I'm sure the flashy new ones sound great in hi-fi terms I still enjoy a bit of the warmth and bounce of old.

Well said, Mr. Pig..

Makes me fondly recall my LP12 Klimax "of the day":
Rosewood plinth, Ekos, Troika & Lingo, thought it could never get better than that back in 1990.

And on your "huge variety of parts" point. I always believed that the Linn factory LP12 "packages" over the years -such as in this new Steriophile article- were probably the best way to go tune wise, as certain newer upgrades applied on to older decks could potentially reveal unwanted flaws in those older decks they were not designed for, such as the possibility that installing a new and tighter tolerance bearing could reveal faults in the sub assembly, arm and power supply of older decks for example.

Or in other words, you can't just simply bolt on stiffer shocks to your vintage 911 and expect it to handle like a new GT3. And those stiffer shocks added to your vintage 911 will now reveal other issues in the overall cars driving dynamics that you never thought were there before.
 
Lovely arm, clean lines etc etc.
not sure about the dinner plate or bits of packing foam
.

Indeed, the edge that Tancast 8 presents to the owner/listener is pretty ghastly & IMHO does a great disservice to the quality of manufacture involved in producing the rest of the P10.
 
Indeed, the edge that Tancast 8 presents to the owner/listener is pretty ghastly & IMHO does a great disservice to the quality of manufacture involved in producing the rest of the P10.

I must admit that I never warmed to the aesthetic of the RP10 while I owned it. Sat next to a P1 few ordinary people would have guessed the price difference and the deck always felt plasticy to me. Guess I'm just shallow ;0)

But Rega have to be applauder for putting performance before perceived value. Most manufacturers won't do that.
 
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Indeed, the edge that Tancast 8 presents to the owner/listener is pretty ghastly & IMHO does a great disservice to the quality of manufacture involved in producing the rest of the P10.

I wouldn't necessarily call it a "Disservice", if anything it's a "Service" for the audio purest. One needs to consider Regas P8/P10 clean sheet design in purposely choosing the Tancast 8 sandwich core material consisting of a very specific -type 8 density out of several other Tancast densities- polyurethane foam matrix placed between an upper and lower layer of a very thin, super-rigid, high-pressure laminate. These are two different materials that Rega ultimately choose to sandwich together, the P8/P10 plinth did not come this way, it's Regas mix of materials and the sides are purposely not finished so the top laminate does not touch the bottom therefor the interplay of materials can work together as they were designed to do, and adding anything to the sides to give it a better, more finished look would ultimately have effected the resulting Tune. - - There is a method to the madness here that comes down to Performance over Appearance, function over form. ...Personally, I don't really care what the deck looks like, and I long ago got past trying to impress my friends, and once the LP is playing and I'm sitting to listen to another full album side -usually with my eyes closed- the looks of my chosen deck hardly matters. I'm after the purest un-colored reproduction of what's on the vinyl as possible on a somewhat limited budget these days, and the P10 is Regas latest crack at it, and the result we see is simply what it wounded up looking like in their attempt to achieve that goal. ...Is it as pretty as an LP12, nope, but I've said that before.
 

Absolutely beautiful deck, but I've never understood how something floating on air is supposed to resist the fluctuating force of stylus drag. It seems obvious on the face of it that none of the drag-resisting components should be made out of air, a highly compressible substance, and therefore not an ideal foundation for an invariant time axis. But I'm not an engineer. What have I missed?
 
I always believed that the Linn factory LP12 "packages" over the years -such as in this new Steriophile article- were probably the best way to go tune wise, as certain newer upgrades applied on to older decks could potentially reveal unwanted flaws in those older decks they were not designed for, such as the possibility that installing a new and tighter tolerance bearing could reveal faults in the sub assembly, arm and power supply of older decks for example.
I'm with you on this one. I know people get a lot of satisfaction by upgrading their ageing deck but for the best balance I would rather pick a point in the LP12 timeline and build a system around that.

1990 was indeed a fine year - one of the best imo ;)
 
The LP12 is the Porsche 911 of turntables - an ancient design kept current by throwing expensive engineering at it.
Yes, but do owners enjoy the driving experience? Is it more enjoyable to them than an a clean sheet / cutting edge design like the SF90?
 
Absolutely beautiful deck, but I've never understood how something floating on air is supposed to resist the fluctuating force of stylus drag. It seems obvious on the face of it that none of the drag-resisting components should be made out of air, a highly compressible substance, and therefore not an ideal foundation for an invariant time axis. But I'm not an engineer. What have I missed?

Again I’m no physicist, but I suspect you will find that the air bearing is far, far more “rigid” in that fore/aft plain that you’d expect (it is a tiny air gap), and then we get to mass vs the frequency of the energy in play and the inherent resonant frequency/damping of the tonearm. An air bearing has far less theoretical “movement” than say a Well Tempered ‘pot of gloop’ bearing, and they work superbly well. I’d be fascinated to know the resonant frequency of an air bearing, assuming it is even measurable.

PS I’m coming from this from a specific perspective as I’ve largely rejected the 1980s “rigid” marketing as flawed thinking and in many ways destructive as it so often results in a tuned resonance occurring somewhere in the audio band. To my understanding *everything* resonates. Good audio design is deciding exactly where you want to put it. The art of tonearm design to my mind is to get that resonance well damped and right out of the audio band. I’ve little direct experience with air bearing arms, I think the only one I’ve ever heard was attached to a Rockport that probably cost as much as a house. It sounded very good as one would hope given the price. They’ve never appealed to me for reasons of complexity and maintenance (dust etc), but I see nothing obviously flawed conceptually. As ever the fact they do work, and work very well indeed, proves that it is a valid approach!
 


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