Hi Bill & Clive! As I think I've mentioned (somewhere!) before, I had one of these beasties, with an SME 3009 Mk2 (?) arm & a Shure V15 Mk III cartridge before I got the LP12/Ittok combo: this originally had a cheap & cheerful MM cartridge fitted (I can't even remember what it was now, other than it was grossly inadequate) - it was another of my s/hand bargains: the gentleman who owned it was a Venezuelan gentleman who was working at their London embassy, but was being transferred in a rush to Madrid. His first problem was that you couldn't air-freight the Ittok because the reduced pressure in the cargo hold would knacker the precision ball-races in the main bearings, & the second was there were at that time no Linn dealers in Spain who would be able to set it up again properly if he sent it by sea. So he concluded that his only option was to flog it quick & get a different deck (I think he had a Pink Triangle in mind, good choice at the time, actually... ).
BUT, because he was in an awful rush, I negotiated a very good deal for cash! I was sure that embassy staff got paid well, so I didn't see any reason to feel sorry for him. We set it up in my system & he stayed for a couple of hours to listen to some of my music. Needless to say, his English -was- perfect & he -was- a thoroughly nice chap. Anyway, the cartridge had to go, & I got a Koetsu Black (the one my younger daughter later annihilated!) s/hand for £200 & I believe that I had to buy the MC board for my Meridian 101 pre-amp of the time (OK, but nothing special... ) *new *which REALLY hurt, lol. Anyway, the new deck combo blew the old one away! Ivor Tiefenbaum (?) of Linn was more of a salesman than an engineer - they got their precision engineering done for them by another firm, but he was spot on with his by-line that you can't get back what you've lost at the start - the Shure would track -anything- at 1g, but the SME's knife-edge bearings meant that it could *-wobble -*& that's no good at all! I -was- sorry to sell the Transcriptor's deck - it *was* a gorgeous thing (question for Bill - does it have a 33/45 rpm switch? If so, that was a LOT easier than the original LP12, which -could- play 45s - I had a few 12" ones which were very dynamic - but you had to take the platter off, fit an adaptor over the motor drive & THEN fit a different length belt!! It WAS a hassle. But the "hydraulic" bit was also a pain on the Transcriptor's because the fluid well kept filling up with general crud & particularly bits of discarded hair which made the speed fluctuate, so you had to clean it out frequently & refill it with the not inexpensive viscous fluid that they specified. The strobe WAS a nice touch though. I think ultimately the verybasic bearing & the lack of any sub-chassis isolation let it down. Just my two penny-worth, as ever... Dave :cool: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Golden Earring's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=66646 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=108834
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