Show us your Sondek

Wouldn’t have used any record not cleaned yet.
If it looks that bad from a distance. :thinking:
Thought you might have tidied it up for a diagnosis question.
It looks very tired you did well. :+1:t2:

Hi - anyone had hands on experience of the Origin Live “Gravity One”
with an LP12?

If you’re worried about the strip, detaching, most retailers should have plenty of spare strip which they can pop in the post.
However, in my experience and in normal circumstances, it is actually quite difficult to detach, but may occasionally lift on the corner after several years.
The approach of using a datum marker on the inside of the inner platter is really quite clever when you think that it means all the inner platters hence LP12s going back 50 years can be upgraded. I’m sure there would’ve been plenty who would have moaned if Linn Products Ltd had produced a new version of the inner platter to make it compatible with the Radikal and L4. Some people may call it Heath Robinson, but there is no doubt, it works.
Regarding information on Linn Products website, it is normal for specific advice and information that you would refer to your retailer just as you should do for Naim Audio.
I hope this clarifies things,
KR, Peter.

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Thanks, that’s reassuring. Last time I gave the platter a wipe, I don’t recall seeing anything amiss with the strip, though I can still picture myself finding a black square on the floor at some point and wondering “what’s this?” :sweat_smile:

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I find it fascinating how we now use ‘Heath Robinson’ to mean something hugely (over)complicated to achieve a seemingly simple result.

From what I can gather, William Heath Robinson was poking gentle fun at modern and developing technology.

If he were alive today and owned an LP12, I suspect that WHR would opt for the simplicity of an Armageddon over the various Linn external turntable power supplies.

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That maybe so, but he would miss out on a huge leap in sound quality. Time and technology move on but it’s great when a manufacturer makes their modern equipment backwardly compatible, without compromising sound quality. Sadly, this ethos has been lost in these parts recently.

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Might Heath Robinson instead have gone for a Rega P10 because of its minimalist simplicity? We can only speculate, I’m sure!

Very true. One reason for the cult of the LP12 is that a TT from 30+ years ago can be upgraded or rebuilt in whichever order you fancy, at whatever pace, until what started out costing you £260 (in my case) ends up at around Klimax level and (to my old ears) about as good as any turntable there is.

I am very surprised that Naim’s new designs seem to be abandoning almost all their customers who bought 1973-2023. For decades, if you had some cash and wanted to improve things, you could buy a better pre-amp or power amp or (being Naim) power supply or phono stage or whatever. Then you could plug it in to your system and hear the benefit.

Making all those people into ex-customers (unless they are willing to replace everything in one go and start again) does seem perverse. Still, if it turns out to have been a terrible business decision, it can easily be changed next year or the year after.

If instead this decision creates tens of thousands of new buyers of complete high-end Naim set-ups, I for one will be pretty astonished. However, the Naim management’s business decision will have been vindicated and the Linn approach will look to be the strange one.

It’s all a bit of a U-turn from when we were young of course.

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That’d a very fair point, Peter!

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You don’t need to buy it all again. I currently have a mixed system of Classic and NC boxes.
Over the years I have often had a Naim system where different generations of kit existed happily together and this hasn’t changed. Whilst in some ways it is nice to have matching boxes I don’t see it as being essential. I never had a Naim CD, choosing another brand, same with a tuner so had racks with kit that looked very different and of course I had it top off with my 79 vintage LP12.

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I am with you @paulbysea. I have no Chrome Bumper boxes, but have olive, olive-that-is-mostly-brown and classic boxes (green light era or white era) all working harmoniously. A year or two ago, I bought a 300DR and might have been in the market next year for a SCDR for my Superline, and perhaps another to replace the ancient olive-ish SC on my 52, and at some point I might well have tried a 555PS in place of the XPSDR on my NDX2.

While the boxes may have changed, that puts me in a situation like that of many Naim owners over the last 50 years.

With the end of production of all these boxes and the deliberate decision that new boxes (as I understand it) will not be compatible with anything from any earlier eras, Naim seems to be sending a clear message.

I can still buy second-hand (after all, they can’t stop me and I probably will). However, their new products are not for the likes of me - if I am not prepared the change almost everything in one go, they don’t want my money and I don’t really deserve any of the new Naim boxes.

This is quite a long way from ‘Show Us Your Sondek’. Suffice it to say that I am glad, as PS notes, that this approach has not been applied to LP12s. If Linn had taken the new Naim approach, my turntable would not look like this: -

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My understanding is that the NPX300 can supply power to a fair amount of Classic items with the right leads. But you could well be right. Maybe Steve @110dB can clarify this for us when he returns to work next week?

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The issue is with gear powered by the Supercap, Hicap and Flatcap. It’s not compatible with the new gear.

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I don’t think it’s a message per se. I think Naim have just made a sea change. It had to happen at some point and here it is. But even so, there is still a good chunk of compatibility between new and old which I find quite amazing.

If my understanding of what works with what is correct (and I will be happy to be told it isn’t), Sea Change might be a fairer description.

Previously Naim was willing to sell boxes to all those who upgrade progressively, and to include that sort of customer in their thinking, but after 2023 it looks as if they are generally not. I don’t understand why removing that compatibility ‘had to happen’, but that doesn’t mean there is no such reason.

Linn (and this is an LP12 thread, not one for those like me whinging about Naim ending our upgrade path) seems to be one of the hifi companies not to to have felt the need to make a similar Sea Change.

In addition, since this is an LP12 thread, it may be fair for to ask here whether anyone has compared the latest version of the NVCTT and PS with the old Superline and SCDR. Perhaps on an actual LP12?

I saw comparisons when the Solstice came out and noted that some Solstice buyers rated the NVCTT & PS as noticeably less good in SQ. However, the stand-alone product now on sale may be compellingly better. Has anyone yet heard it?

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I don’t think the NVCTT and Power supply are available yet. I think they will arrive with the 300-level kit in September. I suspect when they do arrive I might start getting an urge to have one with my 222. I will resist the urge as long as I can or until my current cartridge needs replacing, whichever happens first. Still listening to lots of vinyl on my Akurate-ish level TT, much more than I was before, so it could be that the cartridge will need replacing sooner rather than later.

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Not for the first time, I am happy to be corrected. When you finally weaken and try it, please report back.

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I don’t think you have been inconvenienced too much by Naim. Looking at your current system, your obvious amp upgrades are 552/500. Source wise, ND555/CD555PS. Vinyl, you are pretty much there. Nice place to be :blush:

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Those would all be even bigger steps than the ones I mentioned - not without appeal, but with generalised guilt or sense of the ridiculous acting as even more of a brake.

After all, just above your suggestion is ‘get Statements’ and just above that is ‘move to a house with a much bigger living room to accommodate even more impressive hifi’.

As for my being in a nice place (or just being a lucky git, though you may be too courteous to put it that way), it’s a fair cop: I think that every day.

My only defence is that just about all of us writing here about our hi-fi boxes are probably pretty fortunate.

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I think it’s the same phono stage and power supply that come with the Solstice. So if your dealer has a demo Solstice you can hear it there.