A Brief History of the Turntable

I’ve been sitting on outfitting my home office with a turntable for a while, mostly because I know once I start down this path there’s no turning back.

I came across this cool Vinyl Me, Please article about how the default setting for a consumer products company is to consistently push out a new line of products.

However, as Ed Selleys writes:

Audio is a ‘mature’ category. Broadly speaking this means that it doesn’t require you to completely revamp everything you own every two years. In all audio formats, but with vinyl in particular, there is sufficient enough stability that products don’t really become obsolete. You only need replace them if they wear out or you’d like something better.

I was interested to learn there are iconic turntable products that have been around for decades with little to no substantive modifications.

If you were to find an original model from the first year of production, every single part for the newer models can be fitted to update it.

Steve Jobs is lol’ing in his grave. Take the Linn LP12 which entered production in 1972.

The LP12 has managed to go the best part of half a century as one of the most consistently sought after and popular turntables that the UK has managed to produce; it’s created a whole sub industry of companies that develop components that offer different upgrades for it in addition to the official Linn ones.

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