It looks identical to the original Ekos in all but color, yet two considerable changes lurk beneath the surface.
The new Ekos SE tonearm seems a less radical product. The Keel also holds the potential for eliminating a problem that has plagued some samples of the LP12: platters and tonearm boards that aren't in precisely the same plane as one another, leading to azimuth errors at the cartridge. (Photos of the manufacturing process, available on Linn's website, show that one large billet yields two Keels.) Advocates of the closed-loop approach to turntable design, which requires linking the platter bearing and tonearm base to one another as rigidly as possible, will see the concept behind the Keel as something of an ideal, far surpassing earlier attempts that either disperse energy unpredictably (using oversized nuts and bolts to clamp the wooden armboard to its steel subchassis) or muffle the energy, thus breaking the loop (replacing the metal subchassis with one made from supposedly nonresonant materials). The Keel goes further along the same road- much further: It's a single-piece subchassis, tonearm board, and Linn-specific tonearm mounting collar, all precisely machined from the same piece of aircraft aluminum. Yet the new Linn Keel represents the first change to the LP12's mechanicals (footnote 2) since 1992's Cirkus upgrade, which comprised a beefier bearing housing and subchassis, the latter accomplished with an extra piece of sheet steel. So it has gone with Linn's new Keel subchassis ($3250), Ekos SE (for Super Evolution) tonearm ($4950), and Trampolin turntable base ($250).Įarlier versions of the latter two have been with us for a while, the Ekos arriving in 1988, the original Trampolin in 1991. But every now and then someone in the Linn organization itself comes up with a retrofit that passes muster and lives to see the light of commerce. Most such tweaks have come from outside of Glasgow: support platforms from the Sound Organisation and Mana Acoustics, power supplies from Naim Audio and Pink Triangle, diverse accessories from Origin Live, and tonearms from Naim, GB Tools, Alphason, Syrinx, and scores of others. Little wonder that Scotland's most famous record player endures as an object of attention for various and sundry commercial tweaks. Visit and look at the Vote Results for June 17, 2007: You'll see that when we asked our readers to name the one audio product that's spent the greatest amount of time in their systems, the most common answer by far was the Linn Sondek LP12 turntable (footnote 1).
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