Linn Linto and Ortofon Rondo Red

Here is the original Stereophile review. Obviously, they liked it a lot.

Stereophile Review of Linn Linto

The review discusses the loading issue. Linn decided that a loading network introduced too much noise into the signal.

I agree with Larryi that the Linto is lively and engaging.

You used to see these used here on Audigon but there are pretty rare these days. Anyone who has one is not giving it up.

I thought about waiting till tomorrow, 6-13-13 to respond, but, I will do so now, because you might be "indisposed" tomorrow.

I had a Linto a while back and liked it a lot. It has a lively and engaging sound. I used it with a Lyra Helikon. A friend has it now and has used it with several different cartridges and it seems to work well with a wide variety of cartridges.

While a fixed load may make it seem less flexible than other phonostages, the chosen value should work well with most cartridges. I tend to not like cartridges loaded down excessively (i.e., LOWER resistance value, such as 50 ohms) so anything above 120 ohms or so would work for me with most cartridges.

Thanks Dtc :-)

The Linto is a very fine phonostage and was Stereophile Class A rated for years. I believe it is out of production. It is very neutral and has a very low noise floor. The one criticism people had was that it does not have variable input impedance options but that does not seem to be an issue for you.

It can be set up for either 54dB or 64dB so you should probably check to see how this one is set up. It comes from the factory at 64dB and you can to cut a jumper to make it 54dB. It is harder to go from 54 dB to 64 dB since you have to recreate the jumper. You probably want it at 64 dB for that cartridge.

I use it with a Benz Micro Ebony TR (the original) and love it. I have not used it with an Ortofon cartridge but it should work fine.