I would never have been able to without the help of a generous friend, he sold me one minus an outer platter, armboard and arm for £50.
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I bought mine secondhand in 1986 after responding to an ad in "HiFi Answers". A guy in London selling it for £300. My car wasn't up to the 500 mile round trip, so a friend drove me there in his VW Beetle for petrol cost, and I sold him my Mission deck for a good price. No mobile phones or internet then. When I got home that night, my missus told me another bloke phoned to say he had one for sale, and he lived at Lostock Hall, 3 miles down the road.
When I started up the LP12, missus said "Wow, we have bass!" Kept that deck for 26 years with no mods, then got £500 as a p/x.
I've enjoyed my LP12's, like the sound but it's the constant need for attention if you even look at them the wrong way. I also hate the Linn pricing ethos, I mean £50 for a drive belt amongst other things. Also rather like the Techie 1200's you need to spend lots of pounds to make them great but unlike the Technics, to get a sorted one out of the box you've got to shell out £6000. They must be doing something right though to have been producing the LP12 for so long.
I wasn't a big fan of the Linn upgrade doctrine, I found it to be very much 'buy this upgrade or your kit is basically rubbish'. My LP12 was fairly basic but sounded great on a good day and very lacklustre on an off day. I found Linn owners to be a really nice bunch of people though.
I was very impressed with a mate's LP12 back in '91 so I probably would have got one then if I'd had the cutter. It's the old cliché I know but it really did 'Just play music.' Lots of great times spent listening to that, smoking premium grade hashish (he had some great connections) and drinking Tennant's Extra. :D
Not me - I never bought into any of that Linn 'myth'. That's not to say I didn't listen to one in my system. I did; I had the use of one for three months, allowing me to compare it with my own deck. Needless to say I heard no reason why I should have bought one.
I had e few. The first one since my youth I can't remember the model. It was a Russian one, a cabinet - radio, turntable and a space to store records. Many years after I had an Universum VTFC1339RC combo with separate speakers and awful sound. After another pause I have started looking again for a TT.
First came Technics SL23a, after that Linn Axis and last year a long desired Pioneer PLC-590. Still got the last two.
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