The Return of the King

Brett Gideon attends a gathering of turntable fetishists and finds out what all the full is all about. 

After 35 years, Linn has finally released a series of upgrades to the legendary Sondek turntable. It’s an overused word, but in this case the use of “legendary” is quite appropriate: the Sondek has had a huge reputation since it was first released in 1972 and for decades it’s been regarded as a superb turntable. Of course, technology has subsequently moved on and there are all sorts of weird and wonderful turntable designs out there, built with exotic space-age materials that wouldn’t be out of place in a Ridley Scott movie. There are massive platters, immensely heavy plinths and platforms, vacuum systems and tangential tracking arms, to name but a few of the developments...

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