I can attest to the modern Linn LP12 to be a very fine turntable with the great benefit of allowing many incremental upgrades available to take it to the very top of the line performance. They are stable once set up. The Linn LP12 Majik is $5K… and you can incrementally upgrade it to the top level $30K Klimax.
I can share some comments from my friend / audio dealer who has setup and serviced all sorts of turntables for over thirty years. Many complaints on Linn as well as some other turntables of them not being set up right comes from people setting them up with no idea what they were doing… leaving off a motor screw, sprinkling baby powder inside the chassis, man handling the tone arm, using the wrong screws putting in thing up side down. This kind of stuff will screw up the sound of any turntable.
I used to have a VPI Aries without a suspension, a fantastic sounding turntable… I now have a Linn LP12… a fantastic sounding turntable.