A year long journey has just come to an end.
My LP12 is back at home.
Fluted Afromosia plinth, fitted with Ittok LVII tonearm.
Originally, it came from Sound Advice, Loughborough, in 1986. (Same as my much loved Epos ES14’s). Until recently, it was kept in original condition - without any upgrades or modifications - and sounded just fine to my ears.
At nearly 35 years young, thought it might benefit from some TLC and so off it went into an LP12 specialist, in October 2020.
Long story short, decided to give it some new life, to go another 35 years…
The brief for this Engineering project was : (1) restore everything back to original condition ; (2) upgrade this LP12 to modern specification. But to be, at least outwardly, looking as original.
Basically Sound supplied, fitted and set up Kore - Karousel - Lingo4 - T-Kable - Trampolin2. Which brings everything inside up to a modern specification, without outwardly changing how it looks. Leaving just the tonearm and cartridge to consider?
Plinth pips, reinstated. Old ones were missing.
Close up details of fluted plinth
More close details of fluted plinth.
Linn Ittok LVII. Made in Japan.
It was quickly established by the guys at Basically Sound that the Ittok was getting tired and needed a little more than TLC. So, organised for it to go off to tonearm specialist Audio Origami. It was stripped down, cleaned, serviced, bearings replaced, relubricated and reassembled. Good as new.
This part of the project is documented on “Show us what’s inside” if you’re interested in the work undertaken.
The Linn Troika is another story in itself…
After some discussion about what cartridge to use, we decided to keep original to period and use a Troika. Tony at Basically Sound was able to source a good condition, used Troika.
BS arranged for the the Troika to go off to Goldring for a rebuild at the height of the second lockdown - November & December 2020 - and so this took weeks to return.
The Troika rebuild is also documented elsewhere in this forum, if you are interested in this aspect.
Although we started to come out of lockdown in April, we then found ourselves in a house move. So, it seemed sensible to wait until we were in our new home. We finally moved during October 2021.
I was in the dealership to collect last week ( Nov 21 ) and listened to it set up with Naim and PMC. It sounded sublime.
I’m particularly impressed with the Troika. Such a lovely balanced sound, even by today’s standards.
It’s home now and I’m just going to get used to using it, with my own boxes, and play a lot of records.
One cool thing is the only outward indication of the upgrade work undertaken inside, is the arm board has the new style logo. Other than this, it’s looks completely original to when it was first built.
All together, it sounds superb. Also, looks fabulous.
I’m so impressed with the lengths the guys have gone to restore back to original condition. It looks pristine.
My sincere thanks to Tony & Graham at Basically Sound for doing such a fabulous job on both restoring and enhancing this venerable old lady. Good for another 35 years service.