The LP12-50 and the Bedrok: what Jony Ive’s edition gave every LP12

For fifty years the LP12’s plinth was the one part Linn never treated as a performance upgrade. It was a frame of hardwood, beautifully made, offered in a handful of finishes and later in fluted form, and when an owner replaced one it was because the corners had opened or the veneer had faded, not because the deck would sound better. Everything that made the deck better happened inside it. The fiftieth anniversary changed that.

The LP12-50

In 2023 Linn built 250 examples of the Sondek LP12-50, a deck designed in collaboration with Jony Ive’s studio LoveFrom. Ive, who had an LP12 of his own, worked on it as an admirer rather than a hired hand, and the result was recognizably a Sondek: the same proportions, the same hinged lid, the same three-spring suspension. What changed was the detail. A new plinth of a dense, dark material called Bedrok. A machined stainless top plate. An aluminum power button and hinges made from solid, replacing parts that had been pressed or cast for decades. A plate inside carrying the name of the person at Linn who built it, since every LP12 is built start to finish by one pair of hands. Under all that sat Linn’s best parts: Keel, Radikal, Ekos SE, Ekstatik, Urika II. It sold out at about $60,000, and it drew coverage from the design and business press that had never written about a turntable before.

One of the 250 came through our workshop that year. It was never on our floor; a customer ordered it through us, and we built and set it up here before it went home. It was, to my eye, the most carefully finished object Linn has made, and the thing we noticed on the bench, before the hinges or the button, was the plinth: dense, quiet, almost stone-like under a deck we thought we knew.

The Bedrok

That plinth is the part of the LP12-50 that survived it. In January 2025 Linn made the Bedrok a catalog part, the first plinth in the deck’s history sold as a performance upgrade, at $12,060, and standard on the Klimax LP12 Bedrok, $56,695.

Bedrok is beech: thin layers of it laid at right angles to one another, pressed under heat into a block more than twice the density of the solid hardwood Linn had always used, then machined to the same dimensions and the same mounting points as every plinth since 1972. The point is not weight for its own sake. A plinth is the fixed frame the three springs push against, and the deck’s top plate and motor are bolted to it; any resonance in that frame finds its way into the suspension and the platter. The denser and better damped the frame, the less there is for the suspension to fight, and the quieter the background against which the record plays. Owners who have gone from hardwood to Bedrok describe a lower noise floor, firmer bass and a sense of calm in the music, the same words people use for the Karousel, which tells you something about what both parts do.

Who it is for

The Bedrok takes every part from an existing plinth, so a Klimax-level deck moves across in a single visit and comes back with nothing else changed. It is also, at this writing, the one upgrade in Linn’s catalog you can see from across the room, which is either a virtue or not depending on how you feel about the hardwood you chose. On a Majik or Selekt deck it is a large step out of proportion to the rest, and Linn’s own order puts the bearing, the supply and the sub-chassis ahead of it; on a deck that already has those, it is the next thing. Keeping a Klimax LP12 current places it among the parts Linn has released since 2021.

Start with a call

If you would like to hear a Bedrok deck against a hardwood one, or to talk about moving yours across, call (503) 222-2599 or write to sales@pearlaudio.com.

— John Loranger, Pearl Audio

See also: Keeping a Klimax LP12 current · Why the Karousel is the best value in Linn’s LP12 catalog · What the magazines have said about the LP12.