Linn Bedrok LP12 Plinth Upgrade

@newton_john 

Thanks - exactly what I was looking for.  I will read "diamond hardened" to mean a "Diamond-Like Carbon Coating" which is likely to be plasma sputtered onto a substrate such as tool steel in a vacuum under tightly controlled conditions,

I admit I have trouble visualising the 'normal' crystal structure of diamond despite animations such as this:  Diamond cubic - Wikipedia

@richardbrand

No wonder it’s expensive.

Yes, I remember struggling at university with text book representations of three dimensional structures. It’s probably easier now with YouTube, etc.

   Linn has a way of adopting certain outside improvements to their LP12.  Case in point, the Bedrock plinth: The British outfit, "houseoflinn", Europe's Leading Linn Specialists(their quote) came up with a laminated Bamboo plinth, The Booplinth, years ago that was machined out of a single block laminated bamboo.  

   In the  August 1984 Page 51, issue of Hifi News And Record Review(J Atkinson was still editor), an article titled,"Sacrilege" by Martin Colloms, had to do with the reason LP12s had this sort of fat bass(personally I liked it and most owners), and he demonstrated the reason for it and a fix for it, the issue centered around the platter bearing/well.  The Cirkus wasn't released until (1993?) to address this issue.  By the way, I did Martin's fix and it worked marvelously( machinist made the part for me).  If you're an LP12 owner, a worthwhile read.  I still have my copy.  $2.75 at Krochs and Brentanos back then.  I think they're fifteen bucks or more now but still my favorite audio journal and authority on audio subjects.

@newton_john

Yes, and I studied crystallography for three years in the Cambridge lab set up by the Bragg father and son pair who invented X-ray diffraction crystallography.  Well before computers and computer graphics, and before Crick and Watson deduced the structure of DNA!  I can't even remember the names of the 2-D diagrams that showed the 3-D orientation of crystal planes ...

From another thread I've just discovered that Australia makes Dohmann turntables which also use Diamond-like coating for the main bearing.

@richardbrand

Fascinating Richard. It’s almost like everything is connected in some weird way. I also had experience of X-ray crystallography in a small way in the lab when studying Physics in the seventies at what is now the University of Westminster. I also had a great uncle who’d been some sort of technician/instrument maker at Cambridge and had worked with some of the great men who’d done much of the Physics that I was learning about. It wasn’t until later that I realised I'd missed the chance to ask him about them.