Linn Klimax LP12 Turntable

The Klimax LP12 is the Sondek with every top-level component Linn makes, assembled and set up as one instrument. The 2025 Klimax Radikal replaces the AC motor with a precious-metal brushed DC motor in an acoustically isolated housing, controlled by an FPGA-managed motor control unit that checks platter speed on every rotation. Its Utopik power supply has two separate, self-regulating rails, one for the motor and controller and one for the phono stage, and the whole supply is machined from three solid aluminum blocks that weigh close to 14 kg, standing on high-mass stainless-steel feet. The Keel SE sub-chassis and armboard are machined from solid aluminum with a bracing structure cut into the underside; Linn quotes a 300 percent increase in stiffness over its previous designs and a center of mass re-balanced across the three springs. Karousel is the bearing, as on every current LP12.

The arm is the hand-built Ekos SE, with a machined titanium arm tube, a stainless-steel bearing housing, bearings with less than 20 mg of friction and temperature-compensated springs for downforce and anti-skate. It carries the Ekstatik, Linn's flagship moving coil: a micro-ridge stylus on a sapphire cantilever, a square armature wound with 4N copper, and a honeycomb-machined 7075 aluminum body with a diamond-like carbon coating and aluminum-bronze inserts, mounted at three points. The signal goes a few inches to a Urika II phono stage on the Trampolin base inside the plinth, where it is digitized at once, equalized in the digital domain with per-unit calibration, and sent losslessly over Exakt Link to a Klimax or Selekt DSM. For a conventional preamplifier Linn's analog Urika, with RCA and transformer-coupled XLR outputs, takes its place.

Reviewing this exact 2026 specification for The Ear, Ed Selley found that congestion present on a lesser deck "vanishes like ice on a hotplate" and called the Klimax "a breathtakingly capable bit of kit," with further gains still available from the Bedrok plinth. Herb Reichert in Stereophile, with the previous Radikal and the analog Urika, described tempo, focus and immediacy as "near-laboratory quality" and wrote that the Klimax preserved the order of a Miles Davis recording "better than any turntable I've had the pleasure of hearing it on." Chris Kelly, also in The Ear, called it "the very best turntable that Linn has ever produced."

The Klimax LP12 is the top of three complete Sondeks, above the Majik and Selekt; every part in it can also be bought singly to bring an older LP12 up to this level. The plinth comes in oak, cherry, black ash, rosenut or walnut, smooth or fluted, and Linn's Bedrok densified-beech plinth is the one further upgrade available. Pearl Audio builds and services LP12s in-house and will set the Urika II's gain and loading for your cartridge at installation.