1986 Linn LK1/LK2

[Lego]

What about when the Kairn/Klout came out? Did everyone prefer that to LK1/LK280? To my ears, with LK280 to Klout you hear Linn stepping towards tunedem from foot tapping focus.

That's interesting Charlie as at the time I felt the LK1/280 was more on the tuneful(sweet) side of things and the Kairn on the more accurate side of things musically.The Kairn seemed to please more of the reviewers at the time compared to LK1 ,especially Alvin Gold which was a shocker as he never had a good word to say about Linn's stuff.I'm guessing the Naim 52 inspired Linn to go down the Kairn route.They've always strived to make the best .

[Charlie1]

Interesting, tx Lego.

I think the LK280 has a bit more grunt than the Klout which surprised me.

[John]

Thanks for those who posted to the thread. There was little doubt for me at the time that the LK1 and 2 were better than the 32.5, Hi-Cap, 250 we had in our shop, Audiophile Systems felt the same. I think the shops that were heavily entrenched into Naim with a large customer base struggled with the introduction of the Linn electronics. Naim obviously carried on and both Linn and Naim prospered after that time.

I left the business shortly after 1987 and think I acquired the shops 42.5/Snaps/110 in trade for my newish Nait. I think I had the 110 upgraded to a 140 and few years later sold the Naim and purchased an Exposure 15 from the old Audiophile Systems sales rep who had just begun representing Exposure in North America. I felt the Exposure was an improvement over the Naim and it worked very with my Quads and would take that system over a LK1/2 Isobariks setup.

[Spannko]

Yes, I was able to compare and my thoughts on the differences were exactly as charlie1’s dealer described, ie “ His view of the Linn amps was that they were not all round better, especially the Hi-Fi stuff, but to his ears they made more sense of the music.” To be more specific, the Naim amps were more transparent, tighter, more real sounding from a hifi perspective, but the Linn was slightly better in the rhythms and tunes department. My system at the time would have been LP12/Ittok/Kans.

Do you recall what Naim gear was used in the comparison? What amp were you using at the time? Did you purchase a LK1&2?

Sorry for the late reply, I’ve only just noticed your question. The LK1/2 was compared against Nait/Nait2/32/42/72/82/52/110/140/250/135 with and without HiCap/SuperCap and possibly Snaps. I also heard the Audio Vois amplifier, which was a 42/110 knockoff by ex Naim engineers. At the time, my favourite Naim amp was the Nait (but I still preferred the LK1/2). To me, they appeared to get worse as they got more expensive. I personally owned an LK1/2 combo, followed by the Dirak, LK2-60, LK2-75, LK280 and finally LK280/Sparks (although I possibly had a Kairn by then - it was a long time ago!)

[RobDodds]

Back in the say I owned a Naim 12s / 110 combo. A sweet sounding pre power. When I tried the LK1 / LK280 it was an unexpected game changer. Linn had no pedigree in amplification and had always relied on Naim. I seem to remember that the reviews were lukewarm too. However I found the Linn to be just more musical. I went from being drawn to play the same few demo records which sounded impressive on the Naim to listening to all musical types. From the first few bars of the first record I just had a smile on my face.

The remote control was original at the time too. When the Dirak power supply for the LK1 was released it just made it even better.

To be honest I recently attended a Naim demo of their latest stuff, including the Statement amps and I still found that demo records were used that were impressive but totally lacking in musical content. The demo of the Statement would not have been out of place In a discotheque. I asked the guy next to me if he could tell what tune the bass player was playing and we agreed it was not tuneful.

This will not be a popular opinion with Naim owners but it's my experience and, like I said I used to own Naim amps.

[John]

Here’s a couple posts of Julian Vereker responding to a post I made on the old Naim forum. I’m still not convinced of his version of what went down.


Date: May 05, 1999 04:28 PM
Author: julian vereker
Subject: Gary & Tony

are both very able and smart people and were well able to see the
commercial milage in carrying both Linn and Naim.

Even if a only small percentage of customers chose Naim, they stood to
make a comfortable amount of money from those sales since, as you
point out, our prices were higher than Linn's. For them to throw away
this source of income would not have been smart, unless they were they
were put into a situation where they 'had' to. (Which is what
happened)

Audiophile Systems spent a great deal of trouble to take care of the
transition of the distribution from them to NANA and were very helpful
in NANA's early days, they also took great care to do a good sales job
on the US dealers to try to ensure that they continued to buy from
them now they were a one company distributor. They had a choice,
either to loose 30% of their sales (Naim) or 70% of their sales (Linn)
since Linn told them to choose, and at the time the LP12/Ittok/Troika
was a large seller and also they were a 'full line' company -
Audiophile were put into a situation where they they would have had to
be very brave to tell Linn to p*** off (a large number of employees
etc).

Sorry John, I think that you swallowed the party line of the time, but
that is not what actually happened.

julian
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Date: May 05, 1999 02:13 AM
Author: julian vereker
Subject: not correct

John said "The US importer eventually dropped Naim because they also
prefered the Linn amps. Yes there were initial problems with the LK2
amp, so I guess not all original amps may have sounded 100%, but Linn
did find the problem and all amps were replaced with new boards. I
think it was a sourced part that changed specification that caused the
gradually failure of the amp."

First, Gary & Tony (of Audiophile systems) after they dumped Linn had
several conversations with me to see if there was some way that they
could take up the distribution of Naim in the US again, during which
they said much that indicated your first sentence to be untrue.

Second, the thermal insulation washers under the power transistors in
the LK2 didn't change spec, it was just that they didn't (ever)
perform to spec. I tried them a year or two earlier since they would
have made assembly a lot easier, but found that the spec sheet rather
exagerated their capabilities.

julian
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