The Linn Religion

When I started working in audio, CD's weren't even a glint in the eye of Darth Vader...I mean Sony. The shop that had hired me sold lots and lots of turntables. I was working with knowledgeable guys that were a lot older than I . These men were serious audiophiles, and being a youngster, my brain was not yet addled by the worries of the grown-up world such as car payments and where the closest liquor store is (or the onset of faulty memory). My brain was still like a sponge, absorbing knowledge at break-neck speeds.

When I wasn't busy vacuuming the carpets, fetching the boss's dry-cleaning or unloading massive speakers from delivery trucks, I was learning about turntables. We had many turntables on hand, including some expensive ( for the time ) models. We had those big. ugly Empire turntable, the futuristic looking J.A. Michell's and two brands that I knew nothing about: Ariston and Fons.

One the older guys, who was fond of wearing a large calculator on his belt, bragged about his audio system, and being naive, I was fairly impressed ( in retrospect, this guy was nerd and was a total dick to me). He bragged about his turntable. I had heard of Lindt chocolates, and wondered why a chocolate company would make audio equipment.

"Oh, you mean Linn, not Lindt? " " Got it" ( I hadn't gotten it at all). And why is Sondek not spelled properly ? I was confused. I did some research the old-fashioned way, which in those days consisted of going to audio shops, pestering the salesman and stuffing a bag full of glossy pamphlets. (I think people still do that at audio shows).

It turns out that the Ariston Audio RD-11 and Fons turntable were knock-offs of the now legendary Linn Sondek LP-12 ( and they also were made in Scotland) . OK...now I got it.  A source of endless amusement in those days ( I still find it amusing) was that when all three speed buttons were pressed simultaneously on a Fons turntable, it would start whirring uncontrollably and rev up to about 400 rpm.

As my boss was fond of cursing at me in Yiddish, I would wait until he wasn't around to play with the Fons. It would also amuse customers, as did the name. Unfortunately for Fons, there just happened to be a new TV show with a character who had a very similar nickname, so combined with the entertaining, and possibly dangerous, uncontrolled spinning, it was hard to take that product seriously.

Used to literally fly off the shelf

As my journey into the world of audio continued, I had become good friends with a couple of guys when I began working at another shop. As mentioned in one of my earlier posts, one of those guys owned an up-and-coming audio shop and he also happened to be the local authorized Linn dealer.

I used spend as much time as possible at his shop on my days off, and he eventually convinced me to buy a Bryston 2B, a pretty good amplifier for its day.  I still didn't know who this Linn chick was, as I wondered for many years what Clyde-built was and the who the hell was this Clyde dude.

As a side note, it turns out that Clyde is a river in Glasgow and Clyde-built was a synonym for well made products. There was an old saying, it seems, about  how differently circumstances might have turned out had the Titanic been built in Glasgow.

I was still quite young and easily impressed by shiny objects. I had purchased a J.A. Michell turntable. I didn't quite realize that, cool as it looked, it was a shitty turntable. It used to annoy me when it would so easily skip as I walked across the room. My friend kept harping on me to buy a Linn turntable, but the subdued design of the wood plinth and overall understated elegance did not sway me. Yet.

I kept bringing rock n' roll records to his shop on my days off just to listen to the high end systems that were available. Having seemingly infinite patience, my buddy would willingly do A/B comparisons of two LP-12's with different tone arms and even cartridges. I was reluctant to buy one these things because of the fairly steep cost. Working in some bogus audio shop selling portable radios to little old ladies and blank cassettes to annoying wanna-be-dj's did not particularly pay well.

I saved up some money and eventually bought a Linn LP-12. When I finally got the box home , I eagerly unpacked it.( I still love the smell of brand new audio components in the box, even more enjoyable than when I used to sniff markers back in my school days).

Something wasn't quite right however. I stared at this big wooden square thing and soon realized that there was no tone arm on it; it was just a deck. I called my friend immediately, and he was more than slightly amused. Chalk that one up to lack of experience. So yeah, I  had to spend more money. I needed a tonearm and my friend obligingly sold me one. The tonearm came with instructions and cardboard templates. I soon found out that I also had to go out and buy a big-ass drill bit for the job of mounting this tonearm. I would be damned if I was going to pay someone for drilling a hole. I got it done.

Time went on and I became an avid reader of Stereophile magazine and, I must admit, drank a lot of their Kool-aid. I messed around with various brands and bandied about various names. It just sounded cool to talk about brands with bad-ass name like like Spectral and Threshold.  If I talked about Linn, some people thought that I was talking about an ex-girlfriend.

Years went by and other endeavors held my interest I didn't worry about buying new audio components. I messed around with the, at the time, the relatively obscure pastime of car audio. It was all DIY in those days, and I had completely deconstructed the interior of some old Buick and transformed it into the first 1000 watt plus car audio systems in the city. Needless to say, the cops didn't know what to make of it, but were more than eager to present me with excessive noise tickets. Those bylaws had probably been written decades before and likely pertained to horses trotting around the city too loudly.

I messed around playing in a few bands as well. I spent a few years having my eardrums blown out by Fender amps cranked to 11 and threw my back out hauling those same amps up 3 flights of stairs late at night after gigs. I was always on the look out for records for my collection and sought out lots of 40's and 50's music. It all came to screeching halt when, as mentioned in detail in a previous post,  records mysteriously disappeared from  retailers' shelves.

I was still visiting my friend's Linn shop on a regular basis. We always talked about audio, but my musical tastes always seemed to perplex him. Very little Country and Rockabilly ever made an appearance in that store or made its way into Linn speakers. One day I had been lamenting the recent demise of vinyl. I had a NAD CD player kicking around that I had traded some tools for (which he not unexpectedly scoffed at, the player, not the tools ). I didn't use it much, but I had acquired many CD's of late. I was getting some DJ gigs and CD was the way to go. He surmised that I would be soon be needing a good CD player. When he told me what a Linn Ikemi CD player was going for, I think that I had a small brain aneurysm.

I had lived in large loft for many years and the cavernous nature of this open space made for horrendous acoustics. It didn't matter if a bunch of crazed musicians cranked a quintet of Fender amps, the copious quantities of booze and the cathedral-like reverb made for good parties. Not so great for high resolution audio. I eventually moved to a small apartment and with its relatively more civilized environment, came a desire to do something about my outdated audio system.

I still had my now ancient LP-12 but knew that I would have to address this new found lack of vinyl. My buddy would constantly extol the virtues of Linn. At this point Linn had a complete range of electronics and speakers. I refused to believe him. I had swallowed way too much Stereophile Kool-aid.

If I were to mention sound-staging and imaging, he would quickly dismiss that and say that it wasn't important, just listen to the music ( and see if you can follow the tune). If I were to ask what happened to the bass, he would tell me that it was the right amount of bass for that size speaker. It took me a while to realize that excessive bass masks low level detail . It also took some getting used to when actually hearing the notes that the bass player was playing. Articulate bass, who knew ? ( also all the bass players that I had played with seemed to be a little on the crazy side).

More importantly, I would argue, I listened to a lot of Rockabilly records. A lot of them were recorded pretty lo-fi, and in some cases , in some garage somewhere in Louisiana using only one microphone. It didn't matter according to him, he told me that I would just hear more of that music.

He was proven right, of course. A few years later, I happened to be playing some Johnny Burnette. There is one slow, bluesy track called " Blues, Stay Away From Me".  The level of detail was astonishing; I could actually hear Dorsey Burnette's fingers on the upright bass.

I didn't immediately heed his advice and purchased a pair of B&W P-4's. I returned them a week later. How can I put this succinctly ?  I *curse-word-of-your-choice* hated them. It was like the sonic equivalent of the black plague ( minus the rats). He took them back graciously while giving me a wry smile that tacitly implied  that I was an idiot. The very same day he offered to lend me a pair of Linn Keilidh's to take home. I couldn't believe how accommodating he was (in comparison to other audio shops that had salesmen who required punches in the face).

What I really like about Linn at this point was all the names of the components had the letter K in them ( Kool by me) and the fact that they were made in Scotland. Way before I ever became a Linn disciple, I always had an affinity for bagpipes. One of the founding peoples of Canada were Scots and there  is still large percentage of the populace that have Scottish heritage. It seems to follow that many cities and towns in Canada host Highland Games every summer ( The Simon Fraser University and the Vancouver Police pipe seem to kick a lot of kilt at these games). I have been enthusiastically attending these for years. There is nothing quite like the sound of many pipers and drummers in tight formation and in full regalia. A word of caution though, never attempt a Cutty Sark drinking contest with a bunch of pipers. It's true that Canadians are smug about their drinking prowess, but that is small potatoes to dudes that can toss a tree trunk clear across a field.

Needless to say, I kept those speakers. The problem was that the rest of my equipment wasn't sounding so good. As any devout Linnite is aware, Linn sounds best with other Linn components. Thanks to all the high end audio magazines that had indoctrinated me over the years, I still had a touch of that strange disease called " audiophilia nervosa". My buddy kept telling me not to worry about stuff like that; Linn takes care of all that.

So, what? No more fiddling with knobs, numerous black boxes, oddball cables and getting lumps of solder entangled in my carpet? Those Spartan looking Linn boxes filled me with apprehension. What?  Linn cables too? The answer was an emphatic yes. The conclusion was, "Just listen".

My friend traded in my LP-12 for a used Karik/Numerik set-up for playing my CD's, as I decided to make the switch from vinyl  (see previous posts about vinyl). I needed more squipment, but I unfortunately had (and still do ) champagne taste on a beer budget. I hustled dome contract work for the shop, built stuff for them and, hell, I think I even cleaned the bathrooms, but I soon had an entire Linn set-up in my home. The conversion was complete; I had embraced the Linn religion.

At this point I guess it would seem inevitable that I would end up working at this shop. I embraced the Linn philosophy as I was taught the intricacies of Knekt multi-room systems and how to convert components from passive to Aktiv ( active amplification by-passing crossover networks for those non-Linn readers that are unfamiliar. To know more, Google it, it will be worth your time).

I also lifted many extremely heavy things. Wilson Audio never seems to neglect the weight of their speakers when discussing specs, almost as if it were a badge of honour. Yes Wilson are fine speakers, and yes they are freakishly heavy, but if you want feel what a hernia is like, try to lift some Linn Komri's. When the Komri speakers first came out, there was only one pair available in Canada. each dealer had their turn to try them out. When these behemoths arrived at our store, the crate itself seemed larger than a Smart Car. The demo room was also on the second floor. Once we wrangled those speakers out of the cases, it was time bring them upstairs. We soon realized that they did indeed weigh as much as a Smart Car and we were gonna need more guys.They cost about 2 1/2 times the price of a Smart Car, but keep in mind that's impossible to in any way look cool while driving a Smart Car.

Get a forklift and call a doctor, will ya ?

I also worked a few of the high end audio shows in the Linn room. Among other things, my duties consisted of doing short demos for visitors that piled into the rows of chairs. My other chief duty was keeping said audiophiles away from our brand new Linn CD-12 player. For some reason they " just wanted to pick it up". When asked why they couldn't pick it up, I would curtly answer " because it cost 30 freakin' grand". How the hell does picking up a CD player help you determine what it will sound like? That nugget of wisdom eludes me to this day.

During this audio show I spoke to many people and soon came to realize just how many audiophiles had an opinion about Linn and just how this brand had polarized them into different camps. By nature audiophiles are elitist. That is not a derogatory description,; we are elitist due to the very nature of the pastime itself. Big deal. However, I was taken aback by the vitriol that was sometimes directed at Linn as a brand. It seemed that people either loved it or hated it. Often the ones who disliked it the most were the ones accusing us of being something akin to religious zealots. Again big deal. Some would say it was "The Linn way, or the wrong way" Once again, big deal.

More acrimonious than the age-old Chevy vs. Ford rivalry, more defensive that Harley riders and angrier than hockey fans in Canada who just lost a game, the debates raged on. It wasn't really debates, more like one-sided tirades directed at us. I think the Crusades were started over something more trivial than this, or maybe Mob wars (eh.. you gots no respect).  I just ignored these seemingly frustrated audiophiles. What can you say to some raving psycho who claims that he could build a Klimax amplifier himself in his basement?  Judging by the look of that freako, it seemed that he spent an inordinate amount of time in basements.

You learn to let it slide, confident in the knowledge that the gospel of the Linn is on your side. I did take exception a few times, however. Years ago, I ran into a young lady who showed interest in coming over to my place late one night.When we got to my place, I powered up my Linn system and put on a bit of music. She immediately said " That's no good". What, the free drinks, my apartment, my hair..what? When I asked what she talking about, she meant to say that the stereo was no good. I cranked up the volume. " Nah. Still no good. " After a stunned silence on my part, I asked her to leave. At this point, you might think that I'm a little nutso myself, but a man 's gotta have his priorities straight (also, there was more beer left for me). Don't mess with a man's car, don't drink his last beer and don't mess with his stereo. I have my priorities straight; don't mess with my Linn religion.