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Linn Keel - What's so special?

John said:
The Keel for Linn tonearms has the arm collar molded into the armboard where with the GS sub you use the original supplied arm collar. The Keel also has lands around the area where the bearing attaches to the subchassis. Those are a couple differences.

The Keel for Aro, which came later, is more similar to the GS/Aro version because of how the tonearm attaches.
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As I say I find it impossible to believe there will be an audible difference.
 
MVV said:
As I say I find it impossible to believe there will be an audible difference.
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It wasn't important to me whether or not there was. I was more concerned that it improved upon the stock chassis which it did.
 
flatpopely said:
Well done, love that blue photo.

On ignore.
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Wait. You don't mean to say that, you had tungsten white balance and the subject was lit with daylight?

MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH....

and here you thought you'd build a SUBCHASSIS? AHAHAHAHAHAHAH.....

aha...

ahh.hh.....

ah.

ahem.
 
Just out of curiosity has anyone taken a keel to one of those laser-reader-thingies and had a cad file created from the stock linn version?

And FURTHER curious...if one DID have the cad file, and you took it to a 10-micron 3d printer, how would that compare? Are there compounds that have the same density with perhaps different resonant frequency/characteristics etc/ etc/?
 
3D printing is almost definitely not the way to go, especially if you think the Keel is expensive. In a few years time, maybe.

The relative anisotropy of a DMLS part might give some quite 'interesting' acoustic effects though.
 
It is dropping, but based on some DMLS parts I recently had made, I think you'd struggle to get the part made for less than the retail price of the Keel.

Aside from cost, you'd also be left with with a surface finish not too dissimilar to an investment cast part i.e. not that nice.
 
Surely a 3D printed Keel-kopy, even if done in the same alloy, won't have the same crystalline structure or strength of a billet cut one. Or am I missing something from the world of 3D printing?
 
James said:
Surely a 3D printed Keel-kopy, even if done in the same alloy, won't have the same crystalline structure or strength of a billet cut one. Or am I missing something from the world of 3D printing?
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3D metal printing is laser sintered powder, so it is porous, not a solid block of alloy. This will make it far less resonant. This may not be the effect you want
 
I am staggered that this bit of metal costs £2,450.

But then it's Linn, so maybe I'm not that staggered.

My point of reference is, of course, my own turntable, which is made entirely of precision machined aluminium, steel and acetal. And when I say precision, I mean 0.01mm tolerance, but then the manufacturer makes satellites and such like most of the time and have their own £multi-million CNC lathes.

http://www.claro-audio.co.uk/claro_newsite/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/diagram-12.jpg
http://www.claro-audio.co.uk/claro_newsite/blog/black-beauty/

The base of my unit is probably three times more complex to manufacture than the Linn Keel, as it has fixings for two arms, two separate motor housings underneath, the bearing housing and the leg fittings. Taking all the other bits into account, it's seeming a bit of a bargain.

I do know that the power supply, which is solid aluminium and is a work of art, costs £450 to machine.
 
davidsrsb said:
3D metal printing is laser sintered powder, so it is porous, not a solid block of alloy. This will make it far less resonant. This may not be the effect you want
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I'm also less confident of applying Linn-tight torque to the bearing housing and arm collar.
 
Thanks for all the replies, some very interesting viewpoints in there...

Re: the original question about the Keel: "Is there some feature of the design that I’m missing that makes it special?" I was particularly interested in the pocket depth, since, whilst the ribbing looks to be laid out on a simple structural grid, the pocket depth varies and I wondered whether this was designed to attenuate the vibration at certain frequencies in some specific way?...

I just found a post from David Williamson (responsible for the Keel at Linn) where he confirmed that the varying pocket depth was done to modify overall weight and centre of gravity. They really wanted it to weigh very close to the original for ease of set up and correct loading of the suspension springs so as to operate at 3-4 hz.

In other words, I believe the answer to my original question is: "No". (though I am happy to be corrected on this :) )

There are many happy owners and very positive reviews of the Keel, so it's obviously a good product. However, when I see videos like the one below, I can't help thinking that there might be a more informed way to go about designing something like this....

[YOUTUBE]watch?v=wMIvAsZvBiw[/YOUTUBE]
 
I read an interesting comparison about Lamborghini break disks containing more metal and more precision engineering yet they costs about £400 for quid for two .

I just looked at mirchelago break disks on ebay and they do look very well engineered :)
 
Daniel Quinn said:
That sort of dilutes the capital invest recouping argument vis-a-vis its price .
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Why? If anything it's likely to have been more expensive than Linn doing it in-house - after all, SME will have their markup on the R&D time and manufacturing, before Linn even get the chance to apply theirs.
 
cliddell said:
Why? If anything it's likely to have been more expensive than Linn doing it in-house - after all, SME will have their markup on the R&D time and manufacturing, before Linn even get the chance to apply theirs.
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That is rubbish.

and if you had read the thread , you will see that linn outsourced the r&d to a Scottish company .

If it is more expensive then they would have purchased the machines and expertise themselves . Companies outsource for 1 reason . Cost .
 
Daniel Quinn said:
That is rubbish.

and if you had read the thread , you will see that linn outsourced the r&d to a Scottish company .

If it is more expensive then they would have purchased the machines and expertise themselves . Companies outsource for 1 reason . Cost .
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Not true. Companies also outsource for reasons of better expertise, lack of available resource undertake development/manufacturing internally and a myriad of other reasons.
 
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