What the magazines have said about the LP12

We are a shop, and a shop telling you its favorite turntable is the best one is not evidence. So here, with dates, is what the magazines have said, in Britain where the deck comes from and in America where we sell it. None of these writers works for Linn or for us, and several of them have been hard on the LP12 at other times, which is what makes the verdicts worth listing.

Britain

Hi-Fi Choice, 2006. For a supplement on the components that shaped British hi-fi, the magazine’s reviewers ranked the fifty most important ever sold in the country. The Sondek LP12 was first: “the most important hi-fi component ever sold in the UK.”

What Hi-Fi? The LP12 sits in the magazine’s Hall of Fame. Its reviewers gave the Klimax LP12 five stars in 2017, visited the Glasgow factory in 2019 to watch the deck being built one at a time, and in 2024 reviewed the current Majik LP12, noting that the entry deck shares its plinth, platter and bearing with the top of the range.

Hi-Fi News. Reviewing the Majik LP12 with the Krane arm, the magazine traced the deck’s lineage from 1973 and called the Karousel bearing arguably the largest single improvement in its history.

Hi-Fi+. Alan Sircom’s reviews of the Lingo 4 and the Selekt LP12 treated both as reference-class, and his piece on the LP12-50 noted that the anniversary deck was covered by the Financial Times, Wallpaper and The Verge, publications that do not normally review turntables.

America

The Absolute Sound, 2011. In its ranking of the most significant turntables of all time, the LP12 was second, behind only the 1961 Acoustic Research XA whose idea it refined. Its editor wrote that the high-end industry as we know it is hard to imagine without the Sondek.

Stereophile. The LP12 was placed first in the magazine’s “Hot 100 Products” in 2002, and named Analog Source Component of the Year in 2004 and again in 2007. Its longtime columnist Art Dudley used one as his reference for some twenty years. In 2022 Herb Reichert reviewed the Klimax LP12 in its current form, with the Karousel, Keel, Radikal, Ekos SE, Ekstatik and Urika, and treated it as the present state of the art rather than a classic kept alive.

What to make of it

Two things stand out across fifty years of this. The first is that the verdicts were earned by different decks: the 1970s Sondek that won over Hi-Fi Choice’s reviewers shares its plinth and its idea with the 2022 Klimax LP12 that Stereophile reviewed, but almost no part. Every one of those parts can be fitted to the older deck, which is the subject of Bringing an older LP12 up to date. The second is that nearly every reviewer, including the ones who were not persuaded, says the same thing about the dealer: the LP12 is finished on the bench, and the shop that sets it up is part of what you hear. That is the work we do.

Hear one

Five LP12s in different specifications are set up in our Portland showroom, from the Majik to the Klimax. Call (503) 222-2599 or write to sales@pearlaudio.com to arrange a listen.

— John Loranger, Pearl Audio

See also: Why the Majik LP12 is the best way to buy a Sondek · Why every LP12 is set up by a dealer · The LP12-50 and the Bedrok.