The LP12 plinth: what you have, when to change it, and where the Bedrok fits

Everything in a Sondek hangs from its plinth: the top plate, the suspension, the motor, the base board. It is the frame of the instrument, and for fifty years it was the one part Linn never offered as a performance upgrade. That changed in 2025. Here is how to tell which plinth you have, when a new one makes sense, and what the Bedrok is for.

How to tell what you have

Start with the serial number; our guide by serial number shows where to find it. The dates and numbers below come from Linn’s service manual; the serial numbers are approximate.

Plinth	Years	Serial number	How to tell
Original plinth	1972 to 1984	below about 53,000	Small corner blocks inside. Many early plinths have fluted sides.
Strengthened plinth	1984 on	about 53,000 on	Enlarged corner blocks. Shine a light into the gap between the armboard and the plinth at the front right corner and you can see them.
With the top-plate stud	1992 on	88,950 on	A stud on the top plate bolts the motor corner down to the plinth.
Bedrok	2023 on the LP12-50; 2025 as an upgrade		Pale layered beech, oiled, with the laminations showing. One finish only.

The hardwood plinth has come in a number of finishes over the years. Today’s are walnut, oak, cherry, rosenut and black ash, smooth or fluted, or painted to order.

A short history

The 1972 plinth was a frame of kiln-dried hardwood with glued blocks in the corners, and in outline it has not changed since, which is why a part made this year bolts into a deck made then. In 1984 Linn enlarged the corner blocks to make the frame stiffer. Its service manual notes that the blocks are so much a part of how the plinth is built that an older plinth cannot be modified to the newer pattern; the stiffer frame only comes with a newer plinth. In 1992 a stud was added to the top plate to pull the motor corner down onto the wood, because the fit between the top plate and the plinth, at that corner most of all, turned out to matter.

When a new hardwood plinth makes sense

A plinth is wood, and wood moves. On a deck of forty or fifty years I look for four things: corner joints that have opened, a top edge that is no longer flat so the top plate rocks on it, screw holes that have been used so many times that they no longer hold a base board tightly, and the small corner blocks of the frame made before 1984. Any of those takes a little away from every other part, because every other part is mounted to the plinth. None of them means the deck is finished. Plenty of old plinths are sound, and we look at yours before suggesting anything.

When one is tired, a new LP12 plinth is $1,155 in any of the five woods, $1,390 fluted, or $1,623 painted to your color. Everything in the deck moves across to it and the suspension is set up again. It is also, plainly, the way to change how the turntable looks, and that is a perfectly good reason.

The Bedrok

The Bedrok, $12,060, is the first plinth Linn has offered for the way it sounds. Thin layers of beech are laid at right angles and pressed together under heat until they become a single material more than twice as dense as a hardwood plinth. The plinth is then machined from that block in one piece, so the corner blocks and top-plate supports that are glued into a wooden plinth are simply part of it. Nothing is screwed into wood. Every fixing goes into a threaded metal insert, so the deck can be taken apart and rebuilt for decades without wearing anything out. It comes with its own top plate, in one finish.

It first appeared in 2023 on the 250 decks of the LP12-50 and became a part any LP12 can have in January 2025. Linn describes the result as more pace, tighter bass and greater insight, and calls it a holistic upgrade, because each part mounted to the plinth works better on it. The closest thing to an independent test so far is FIDELITY magazine’s comparison of two otherwise identical Klimax LP12s, one on each plinth: a quieter background, a larger sense of the hall, and firmer control when the music gets dense.

Where does it belong? Linn puts the plinth second in its upgrade order, after the bearing. In practice I see the Bedrok as the last step of a Klimax-level deck more than an early step of a modest one. With a Keel SE, a Klimax Radikal and an Ekos SE in place, the hardwood frame is the one part left that has not been taken as far as Linn can take it, and that is where the Bedrok earns its price. On a deck earlier in its life, the same money goes much further on the bearing, the power supply and the sub-chassis, and the Bedrok will still be there when the rest is done. Linn makes it in small numbers, so it is worth talking to us early.

More on the Bedrok: the launch as reported by What Hi-Fi?, The Ear and StereoNET, the reviews gathered on our Bedrok page, and Keeping a Klimax LP12 current.

Start with a call

Call (503) 222-2599 or write to sales@pearlaudio.com. A photograph of the deck, and of any corner that worries you, tells Russ Sherrell, our LP12 master, and me most of what we need to know.

— John Loranger, Pearl Audio

See also: LP12 plinth · Bedrok · The LP12-50 and the Bedrok · The LP12 sub-chassis and armboard · Bringing an older LP12 up to date.