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Some mild disagreement from an ex-LP12 owner and a moral...

Posted by Top Cat on September 27, 2001 at 01:40:58:
DMan, firstly, the Axis isn't even close. Period. Nice turntable, but no contender, really. Not to say I wouldn't like one as a second, urm, third table, but the LP12 is miles ahead.
That said, Linn's recent price increases have pushed it into the price bracket of many more superior tables, including the likes of the Clearaudio EVolution, which I recently chose over the Linn, Rega P9, Xerxes. Of course, it's always down to personal preference at this level, but my situation was interesting.
My LP12 had been ruined when a wall shelf had come away from the wall, and my insurance company paid up the £3800 ($5500?) new value of the TT. It was an LP12/Lingo/Cirkus/Naim Aro/Asaka - a great table, no question. HOwever, I'd bought it all secondhand over the years, bits here and bits there. I'd paid perhaps £1750 all in, probably quite a bit less, to build this table. AT that price, it is clearly a bargain. However, I had never looked at more expensive tables originally, due to my budget not stretching that far. Thus, I didn't try things like Michell Orbes, Clearaudio, etc.
With a budget of £3800, I had fully intended to replace my LP12 with a new one, except with a Naim Armageddon PSU instead of a new Lingo, diverting the difference in funds toward a better MC cart - an Arkiv. However, I found that at that price, there are so many turntables worthy of audition, and I found that, whilst my loyalty to the LP12 was and is very high, my ears clearly told me that it can be bettered.
The Rega P9, whilst not as musical in my opinion, beats the LP12 for the all-important dynamics and pace. The LP12 is by no means the lesser table for it - I prefer the LP12 'balance' over the P9, but I had to try it for myself. I actually quite fancied the simplicity of the P9, but found it not to my tastes in the end. The Xerxes, another great deck - but again, something just didn't do it for me. I was prejudiced against the CLearaudio deck at first - I felt that its aesthetics and tangential tonearm were quirky and I expected it to sound 'blah' in a kind of Gyrodec way (no offense to Gyro owners, but it's never been my fave deck, although I did demo it to reassess my previous experiences with it, to no avail). However, I found it systematically beat the LP12 in all of the key areas, PRaT, and dug out a high degree of additional detail that the LP12 just couldn't get. Most importantly, it had the PRaT *AND* Transparency, a thing that the LP12 never did.
The moral is: don't be blinkered, as I was. I would have still been delighted with my LP12, enjoying the music, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, I now see that there ARE better tables for less than the current new cost of a fully-loaded LP12 - my CLearaudio rig, including arm and SIgma Gold MC, came to less than £2800, a saving of £1000 which I put toward new Preamp and a CDR machine.
TC '..'