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Turntable blind testing on the gadget show…

h.g. said:
I am fairly sure audiophile subjective reviews hadn't been adopted by the mainstream press in the early 70s and was more likely to have been mid to late 70s. The LP12 was a decent but ordinary turntable for a year or two after release until the marketing in some of the first audiophile subjective reviews turned it into a magic one at least in the eyes of people prepared to accept the dubious content of subjective reviews. At the time the reviewers hadn't quite worked out how to get away with subjective reviews and in the first few attempts there was a tendency to make one or two statements that could be checked. For example, I could hear this instrument on this track with the LP12 but not with Technics or whatever. I recall one of the first LP12 subjective reviews falling foul of this and would like to find it. Unless I am mixing it up with another review (a possiblity with my current recall) it talked about how scattering records on a carpet unsleeved didn't interfere with the magic and one of the tracks mentioned with some inaudible instruments was by Roberta Flack I think. Ring any bells with anyone.
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Wasn't it in Practical hi&Audio I remember they went to the SME boss's home to conduct the test, stacked Quad 63's, technics SP10....
 
cooky1257 said:
Wasn't it in Practical hi&Audio I remember they went to the SME boss's home to conduct the test, stacked Quad 63's, technics SP10....
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This link mentions a June 1976 review but shows the Feb 1976 cover. The timing fits: 3 years after release, the beginning of the audiophile phenomenon in the mainstream and about a year before I changed my career path. Practical HiFi though would have been only an occassional read for me rather than a regular one. There is likely to have been other LP12 reviews around this time and it seems likely that the very first adverts dressed up as reviews would have appeared in magazines with editors and journalists prepared to make the change. It was a contracting and turbulent time for the industry after the stereo boom and "subjective" reviews and marketing-lead rather than engineering-lead products seems to have been one of the few growth areas in the UK.

This link refers to a 1976 review in Hi-Fi News in which the LP12 was reviewed as a competent turntable rather than a magical one. Suggests this was probably the year the LP12 marketing started to take hold of the imaginations of subjective audiophiles. Perhaps the review was a reaction to it? Anyone?

Has anyone got a copy of the Practical Hi-Fi June/Feb 1976 with the Linn review and able to confirm the contents?
 
I'm sure I've got a 1970s magazine somewhere where they compared the LP12 to a Fons CQ30. The conclusion was that the CQ30 was the better deck!

Edit - sorry; just seen that was the above link.
 
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