This past summer, my world was rocked by the Supatrac Blackbird tonearm — a brilliant original design that bettered my beloved Tiger Paw Javelin. Back then, I described the Blackbird’s sound as robust, full, rich, and “embarrassingly intimate” — the rendering so lifelike that you felt a bit like you were violating the performer’s privacy.…

In September of last year, my friend Mark started a thread on AudioFlat called “Rather cool new arm.” Mark is the most knowledgeable person I know in hi-fi, so when he calls something both “cool” and “new” — he said of the design “I’ve never seen this idea before and it does look like a…

If you’ve been following this blog and my LP12 Modification Frenzy in particular, you’ll know I’ve had some issues with the Lingo 4. I bought one in December of 2019, then found that it had a ticking motor when I installed it. Unsurprisingly, the noisy Lingo 4 did not sound better than the Mose Hercules…

I’ve covered the nitty gritty in my previous post on the Karousel: what it is, how it’s different (and not) from the Cirkus it replaces, its dimensions, how to install it. In this post, I’ll add a bit more information I’ve learned in the meantime and then jump straight into praising this bearing — which…

This latest installment of the LP12 Modification Frenzy features the Stack Audio Serene Baseboard. You can read all about the installation of the Serene in this previous post. TL;DR I didn’t need the Stack Audio Serene Baseboard to sound better than my previous setup, which was no baseboard. What I needed it to do was…

I have had plenty of time to contemplate this post. In that time I have come up with many possible titles. Among them: I Hate Linn (nice and simple) How I Got Gaslighted by Linn (an attempt to work in contemporary… lingo) In Which I Realize I Have Been Inadvertently Advertising for the Most Loathsome…

A while back, I contacted Theo Stack about trying one of his Serene Baseboards (£150/$185). I’ve been curious about the Stack LP12 upgrades for some time. I was particularly interested in their approach to vibration damping. Many of the upgrades I’ve tried during this LP12MF of mine follow a “maximum ringing” philosophy — or simply…

I’ve been highly skeptical of the Linn Karousel. As I discussed in my post on the Tiger Paw Tranquility magnetic bearing support, I just couldn’t make sense of what was supposed to be better or different about the Karousel, which made its high price of £750/$975USD hard to stomach. But I’ve heard such good things…