Ivor Tiefenbrun has always been passionate about music. Sent out by his wife to buy much-needed furniture for their first flat, he came back with a hi-fi. He bought an expensive turntable and speakers but was deeply disappointed by the sound quality — he could only listen to music for a couple of hours, before wanting to turn it off.
Ivor was also a keen engineer and he made an interesting discovery: the music sounded better when he put the speakers in a different room from the turntable. He found this rather puzzling. How could the speakers interfere with the turntable? He decided to explore this further and so began a 40-year old love affair with music systems.
Precision Engineering
The answer lay in the quality of the engineering. The turntable was so badly designed and made, it was affected by the vibrations from the speakers. The only solution was to go back to basics.
Ivor redesigned the turntable from first principles using precision-engineered components to ensure a constant speed and minimum distortion. The result was the Sondek LP12 turntable. It was a revolutionary design backed by new levels of manufacturing quality, with parts made to the same standards required for aerospace.
The Sondek LP12 was launched in 1972. It introduced the music world to unique features, such as the patented single-point bearing which inspired the Linn logo. More importantly, it retrieved more music from a record than any other turntable on the market, then and now. You only had to listen to hear the difference.
This set a standard for Linn which still holds true today. We don’t just design outstanding products; we build them to the most exacting standards, sometimes to within 0.001 mm. It’s about accuracy, consistency and reliability.