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Lingo 4 motor noise

Ah yes, I completely accept what you say about the tell-tale signs that the unit has not been fitted before. Strange though that is should have been passed around, from hand to hand, in the manner you describe.

Peter Swain is certainly someone I would trust to have had plenty of experience with the Lingo 4, both fitting and use. However, the idea that the motor requires 50 to 60 hours running-in time concerns me as this suggests poor tolerances and/or quality control. A motor like this shouldn’t require any running-in and is really a very simple construct. Irrespective of the validity, or not, of running this motor in you say you have already had it running for 150 hours and the problem persists; on this basis I think it is fair to say it is faulty.
 
This doesn't make sense. A new motor shouldn't tick or knock at all, period. Try the drop of oil (I use a nurse's syringe) to see whether it cancels the noise or not.

Just do it, it can't do any harm.
 
YNWOAN said:
Ah yes, I completely accept what you say about the tell-tale signs that the unit has not been fitted before. Strange though that is should have been passed around, from hand to hand, in the manner you describe.

Peter Swain is certainly someone I would trust to have had plenty of experience with the Lingo 4, both fitting and use. However, the idea that the motor requires 50 to 60 hours running-in time concerns me as this suggests poor tolerances and/or quality control. A motor like this shouldn’t require any running-in and is really a very simple construct. Irrespective of the validity, or not, of running this motor in you say you have already had it running for 150 hours and the problem persists; on this basis I think it is fair to say it is faulty.
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Yes I am in KL having looked after clients in Dubai and Hong Kong already on this trip.
Just to confirm what has already been said above: new Lingo 4 motors as supplied by Glasgow often do have a habit of making some noise initially. This noise dissipates over time and ordinarily between 50 and 100 hours.
This is the advice I was given by the Linn Service department when I raise the problem with them way back in early 2018 when I was fitting the very first lingo 4s. Their advice proved to be correct and the noise dissipated.
If the noise does continue then given this lingo 4 as I understand it is secondhand, the best thing to do is for the owner to contact [email protected]
Quoting the serial number so they can see the original selling dealer and the date of sale and given it will be within five years and I’m like our friends in Salisbury where the warranty is not transferable, with Linn it is!
I would echo the comments earlier on regarding DIY set up of the lingo 4 as it’s a little bit more involved than even a radical. However, on the secondhand market it’s very much up to the individual.
What is inescapable is the new lingo is a massive improvement over the old and its price is extremely competitive in my opinion given that it does come with a motor included in the price (which generally gets quieter if you give it a chance) :)
Please excuse me now I need to get back to my work.
Best regards, Peter
 
FWIW, i have the Lingo4 and it's dead quiet, quieter than an SME 20/3 I had which had a slight whirring sound up close. The L4 is silent. Now, if the bloody box was a nicer shape... I have the instructions, and they look decidedly complicated, so I imagine it would be easy to f*** up the install ;)
 
That's good to know. Another 24 hours of running on mine, still plenty of noise coming out of it...

I often find that the more intimidating the instruction manual, the easier the install — it's usually just a sign the people who wrote the manual were being extremely thorough, and nothing unexpected will arise. That was the case with the Lingo 4 — took about an hour to install, all very straightforward. (Installing my subchassis and top plate was more work.) Well, except for the noisy motor.

I just hide the box behind some books on a nearby shelf...
 
I've heard back from Linn. It looks like since this was originally purchased in Europe, any replacement parts won't be covered under warranty. (If it had been purchased anywhere in North America, I believe they would have been covered.) They suggested I take it to my local Linn dealer, have them inspect it (cost involved, of course), and take it from there.

I am, of course, starting to go a little bit crazy, wondering how much noise is normal, if I'm what I'm hearing now is just normal. It's quite faint, but I can still hear it, especially once the lid is on, which amplifies the sound. And my continued listening tests show no improvement over the Hercules (some tracks a little better, some tracks a little worse), which suggests something may be indeed me up...

One thing I'd been thinking about, and which the Linn response also raised: maybe it's something about the Tiger Paw Khan top plate I'm using. It's so rigidly fixed to the plinth — four extra attachment points compared to the original stainless top plate I'd been using — that perhaps any vibrations from the motor travel more readily into the system...
 
There's a few of us with Mober DC PSUs and the Khan top plate. The Mober uses a sensor as well and it might be worth checking out how others have mounted it ? Mine was built for me, so not privy to the specifics of how the Khan/Sensor issue was, specifically, sorted out.
 
There's a thread here on pfm in which @sq225917 shows a pic of how he's installed his Mober DC speed sensor on the Khan. Looks like a simple matter of a 3mm spacer.

The Lingo 4 sensor on the Khan isn't an issue -- a little inelegant, but fine in practice. Even before I got it leveled, it was working just fine. But I wonder if a rigidly-mounted aluminum top plate (as opposed to a more loosely connected, and more thin/flexible stainless steel top plate) might affect how much motor noise is introduced into the system...
 
The standard top plate isn’t loosely fitted in any situation if it’s done right. The point of the better motors and power supplies is they emit less vibration to start with.
 
The rigidity of the top plate is a red herring. As 9designs writes above, the standard top plate isn’t a loose or lossy item.

Linn are great at sidestepping these sort of issues (always have been) - they’ll come up with a whole bunch of obfuscation right up until they solve it. I suspect all the motors are prone to being a bit noisy, but yours is noisier than the norm.
 
Given the rpm that the a.c. motor spins at it should be modestly simple to mount it in a method that damps around this frequency but still effectively holds it rigidly. 5mm of neoprene banding, top and bottom of motor inside another tube should do it. Then mount that outer tube rather than the motor top plate.
 
YNWOAN said:
I suspect all the motors are prone to being a bit noisy, but yours is noisier than the norm.
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This is my current working theory. If the idea is that they start noisy and then get quieter, it seems hard to determine when they've become "quiet enough." My motor has now gotten quieter, so I'm starting to wonder if it's any different than a "healthy" Lingo 4 motor. It's possible I'm just listening more closely and critically, since I heard it when it was in its initial noisy state...
 
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sq225917 said:
Given the rpm that the a.c. motor spins at it should be modestly simple to mount it in a method that damps around this frequency but still effectively holds it rigidly. 5mm of neoprene banding, top and bottom of motor inside another tube should do it. Then mount that outer tube rather than the motor top plate.
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Wasn't there somebody doing something similar with the Mober DC motor over in the diy section at some point? I can't find it now, perhaps I dreamed it ...
 
After a few more days' run-in time, the noise on the motor does seem to be slowly diminishing. I now have to really strain, and put my ear really near the motor, to hear it at all. So it seems my Lingo motor is likely just a normal one, on which the noise is going away a little more slowly than others.

A good thing, too, as my local Linn dealer charges a flat rate of $500 just to inspect the condition of the motor, and Linn informs me it wouldn't be covered by warranty if not installed by an authorized retailer (also, they warn my top plate may not be compatible with the Lingo 4), so the motor itself would cost another $1045.

Not an experience, alas, that has left me especially enamoured of Linn, the Lingo 4, or my local retailer...
 
david ellwood said:
Are you being fecking serious?

It’s to avoid situations like this that linn insist on dealer install.
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Not really at all. The Lingo 4 has been around for a few months now and this is the first I have heard that, "They all do this". It could well be that, in the room this Lin is sitting in, the ticking is exciting a resonance in the listening environment and sounding way louder than in most other rooms. It could also be that, the person themself is particularly susceptible to the exact frequency the tick occurs at. I really enjoy the old 301s and 401 TTs and yet, I'd have difficulty living with one as their "background vinyl rush noise" sits exactly on a point where I'm slightly more susceptible to hearing it than many people. It's not an issue at quiet levels however, for serious listening levels, it's just something that irks me.

I had a friend who was a Sony TV engineer who once said to me, "There's one thing about Sony TVs (in the days of CRT screens) that once you notice it you wonder how you ever missed it. I'm not going to tell you what it is however one day, you'll see it".

I had owned various Sony TVs for over decade when I spotted what they meant and from then on it was blatantly obvious what they were talking about. Sony CRTs had what looked like an incredibly thin piece of wire that went from one side of the screen to the other horizontally in the middle of the screen. My partner never spotted it until I actually pointed it out to them the day before we swapped it for a flat screen TV.

With the ticking motor, I suspect once you know they have a habit of doing it and you're doing a couple of LIngo 4s a week mods, your brain pretty much, shuts it out as it's a "short term issue". It's only when someone else who doesn't know it does it then points it out do you say. "Oh yeah, they have a habit of doing that till they run in".

I reminded of my dad's mate who sold a rather exotic car in the mid 70s to be contacted by the new owner asking them "Does the car have any quirks I should be aware of?". Their reply was..."Yes one, it has a tendency to pull into the New Inn car park and stop whenever it's driving past and it's open".
 
Have no idea of the relevance of that story to buying a second hand item that either has an issue or isn't installed correctly. Buy a cheap online bargain and take your chances, if you think the save is worth it. Better to ask the dealer if they have any used or ex demo stock, that's what I've often and done and it's usually worked.

That said if they do all tick it's poor on Linn's part allowing such an issue out, they should sort the quality of the part out or run them in on test before dispatch. I wouldn't expect to buy one and have to leave it running for a week or two before I could listen to it.
 
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