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Now the dust has settled - the Karousel

Sounds like another step on the Linn journey toward making the LP12 sound like the real thing ... which has been saddening for many who loved its colouration. Could be cynical and say, skip the next ten 10 years and the expense by buying a Brinkmann.
 
I like its colouration, and each upgrade has maintained its character, Karousel included. There's no such thing as the real thing in HiFi IMO, but there is such a thing as an enjoyable presentation. It explains why I also tend to steer away from some of the non-Linn 'upgrades'.
 
Had a demo of the karousel 2 weeks ago, identical decks apart from the Karousel... only took 1 track to hear the difference so order placed.
Picked up deck today, and it's sounding fantastic. This is a no brainer upgrade... first album played was Unplugged by Eric Clapton, thought this was a great album before but now it's jaw dropping fantastic.
 
Alfaholic said:
Had a demo of the karousel 2 weeks ago, identical decks apart from the Karousel... only took 1 track to hear the difference so order placed.
Picked up deck today, and it's sounding fantastic. This is a no brainer upgrade... first album played was Unplugged by Eric Clapton, thought this was a great album before but now it's jaw dropping fantastic.
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Super exciting to up ones replay system. I have to wonder however how much of the improvement is due to the comparison of a worn bearing vs a new one. If a brand new cirkus had been auditioned in an identical table to one with a worn one would there also be an appreciable difference? Yes I am sure a new Karousel vs a new Cirkus would be better. Any idea how old the Cirkus was in the demo provided? If new great!
 
VTA said:
I have to wonder however how much of the improvement is due to the comparison of a worn bearing vs a new one. If a brand new Cirkus had been auditioned in an identical table to one with a worn one would there also be an appreciable difference?
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I'm sure there is something in this. I spoke to someone with inside knowledge years ago who said that the improvement of the Cirkus over the older bearing was largely lost once the Cirkus had worn a bit. I don't know if that's right but it's what I was told.

Bearing wear is a strange one. Most of the bearings I've seen show some wear after a relatively short time of use but I've seen ones that are decades old and still in fairly good shape. I reckon most of the decks out there that are more than a few years old will have some bearing wear and the older ones probably have significantly worn bearings.
 
VTA said:
Super exciting to up ones replay system. I have to wonder however how much of the improvement is due to the comparison of a worn bearing vs a new one. If a brand new cirkus had been auditioned in an identical table to one with a worn one would there also be an appreciable difference? Yes I am sure a new Karousel vs a new Cirkus would be better. Any idea how old the Cirkus was in the demo provided? If new great!
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The Karousel deck was brand new and the circus deck was dealers demo deck which he has had for about 12 months. He only used it for demo's as he prefers SME and Rega decks.
 
Mr Pig said:
I'm sure there is something in this. I spoke to someone with inside knowledge years ago who said that the improvement of the Cirkus over the older bearing was largely lost once the Cirkus had worn a bit. I don't know if that's right but it's what I was told.

Bearing wear is a strange one. Most of the bearings I've seen show some wear after a relatively short time of use but I've seen ones that are decades old and still in fairly good shape. I reckon most of the decks out there that are more than a few years old will have some bearing wear and the older ones probably have significantly worn bearings.
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Hi Mr pig,
I have had a bit of a search online and can't find any photographic examples of what to look for in terms of bearing wear (I would notice major scoring etc :)) any tips (pun intended ) on what to look for/what constitutes good, bad or ugly in terms of wear?
 
Cheers - nothing in particular about the profile? I think that I would like to see a high quality photo of a good one to make some sort of comparison.
 
VTA said:
Super exciting to up ones replay system. I have to wonder however how much of the improvement is due to the comparison of a worn bearing vs a new one. If a brand new cirkus had been auditioned in an identical table to one with a worn one would there also be an appreciable difference? Yes I am sure a new Karousel vs a new Cirkus would be better. Any idea how old the Cirkus was in the demo provided? If new great!
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I bought a used Cirkus fitted deck that was about 12 months and did the Karousel upgrade not long after. The difference was obvious and well worth the price. The quiet parts of a clean record are just that - quiet. Almost CD like quiet and it’s a bit eerie in a way. The Cirkus bearing that was swapped out looked barely used so there’s definitely something going on with the K bearing.
 
What I don´t get is why the Karousel with its ball bearing welded on the end is such a blast, yet the Maglev Tranquillity which reduced the pressure on the Cirkus bearing by 40% ???? was nowhere near so well received. Must be the thrust pad or pixie dust.
 
Is it really a ball bearing? I always thought that Linn made a bit of a thing about engineering the profile of the bearing.
 
Well, I saw it described as a ball bearing in an article about how loads of other manufacturers have been using them for donkeys´. - there are posh ones, you know.
 
Chris said:
Well, I saw it described as a ball bearing in an article about how loads of other manufacturers have been using them for donkeys´. - there are posh ones, you know.
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I know there are different grades of ball bearing (used some grade 25 in my push bike rebuilds just for the hell of it - I'm sure it made bugger all difference on my bottom bracket over and above bog standard :))

I don't believe that welding a bearing would do any good to the tolerances required for a record player bearing.
 
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