Why Linear Tracking never took off?

Ha! Phasecorrect, you will get some posts on this thread for sure.

Actually linear tracking did "take off", and it is seen on some of the best, and most expensive turntables made. Rockport, Walker, Forsell, Versa Dynamics, Maplenoll,Goldmund, Clearaudio are a few of the ones that have the linear tracking type arms on them as a combo/package. Eminent Technology ET-2.5 is one of the more commonly seen separately available linear tracking arms.

The thing about linear tracking arms is, that it takes a high quality, and usually high cost application to make the most of this design. The mass market ones that were commonly seen in the 80s, like HK/Rabco,Pioneer, Technics, etc, were too "loose" to provide what was really needed to make an arm like this perform at top level. The air-bearing types finally showed what could be done with a linear tracking arm, and these are some of the best arms on the planet.

They are not without their problems, especially in set up requirements, but they do perform at a very high standard.

The Revox TT is a pretty good one for their "genre" of TT, which is direct drive, and mediocre linear tracking. If you wanted a TT of this type, you should be aware that the direct drive types will impart a motor vibration into the platter(whether they claim it won't or not) and the linear arm of that type will not really be true linear, but instead, a "crawler", and will be loose enough to lose information at the arm bearing. For the money that you will pay for a Revox 791, or a B&O 9000, you could get a nice, belt-drive, pivot arm TT, that would walk all over the Revox in terms of performance.

Poorguy, yes I think they are. The Revox is a very well made turntable with Swiss precision. Unfortunately they decided to use direct drive, which inherently puts the motor vibrations into the platter, even though most DD makers claim it doesn't. The only DD tables that were really good are the Rockport, which is all air-bearing, and the Goldmund. Before Psychicanimal jumps in here, I'll say the Technics SP-12 does a decent job with DD. And so does the Revox. It just doesn't do as well as a good belt drive table does. In addition, the Revox linear arm is not good enough to beat out a good pivot arm. This combination of things puts the Revox a level under a good belt drive like the ones you mentioned. Now I know that some people have these Revox TTs, and I don't want to be disparaging of them, but this is my opinion based on listening tests in the store I worked at, where we sold Rega, Linn, Sota, and many other belt drive TTs, and we also sold the Revox stuff. I did comparison listening on these things when they were brand new. My opinion has been stated above.

Jody, no I don't know what a table like that would bring these days. I suspect not alot.