THE journey never ends if you own a Linn Sondek LP12 turntable, whether a recent or ancient model. It can be a wonderful or woeful thing, depending on your outlook. And if you’ve yet to reach flagship-level LP12, here are two offerings for your upgrade considerations – the Arko tonearm and Kendo cartridge.
The high-performance Arko is Linn’s first entirely new, in-house tonearm model since 2006, and comes in just below the range-topping Ekos SE.
“One of the earliest Sondek LP12 magazine adverts bore the straightforward headline ‘Simplicity!’. We have returned to fundamentals with Arko by removing all bar the mission-critical elements of tonearm design, boiling these down to their essence, and then honing what was left to superlative standards. Perfectly poised and rigorously refined, Arko is effortful simplicity,” Linn tells us.
If you’re a current owner of a Majik, Akito, legacy Linn, or even third-party tonearms, you may want to audition the Arko at your nearest Linn dealer to hear the difference.
Linn is also making 2020’s Krane static-balanced tonearm, shipped with the Majik LP12, available on its own.
“Krane is an ideal upgrade for decks featuring earlier Pro-Ject- and Jelco-made Majik tonearms.”
And the perfect partner for the Arko is the Kendo, “an all-new, elite performance moving coil cartridge”, and which sits in middle of Linn’s cartridge range.
“Kendo is a modern martial art form; translated from the Japanese it means ‘way of the sword’. At Linn however, the word has unique connotations. Our sword is forged of boron, with a super fine-line diamond tip. Our armour is nickel-coated, 7075-grade aluminium.
“Kendo is the eager apprentice to its master, the flagship Ekstatik,sharing the same values, and picking up many of its traits along the way.
“Kendo presents an alluring performance jump for current owners of Adikt, Krystal, legacy Linn and third-party cartridges.”
Then, there’s also the Koil, an entry into the world of MC cartridges.
“This new MC cartridge provides a step up in sonic performance over our Adikt moving magnet cartridge, either as an upgrade or fitted as standard to a brand new Majik LP12 MC.”
As you can see, the LP12 magic, sorry, majik, continues…
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