Linn Bedrok LP12 Plinth Upgrade

@daveyf 

The price of the Bedrok is small fraction of the extra cost of the LP12-50 above the regular Klimax. I don’t see why the price of one should restrict Linn on the other. One is one off unique special design and the other is a standard upgrade for all LP12s. The former was a limited run of a couple of hundred, but the potential sales of the latter could have been huge if it weren’t for the high price.

It may well be that it would have been more expensive for Linn to do the machining of the Bedrok in their own factory. I understand that it is a messy process. They’ve always outsourced loudspeaker cabinet building. The reason they cancelled the Komri was that there was a minimum number of cabinets for reordering that made it uneconomic to continue beyond the initial run. It seems they have opposite problem with Bedrok - being only able to produce them in limited numbers.

@richardbrand 

It is striking how little progress has been made in fundamental physics since I was at university fifty years ago, despite the huge expenditure incurred. So far, string theory hasn't produced a single experimentally testable finding. The only tangible result we have is the confirmation of the Higgs Boson which was postulated in the sixties. The incredible technological advances we've seen have been based on physics that was already known in the sixties and seventies. 

@newton_john  The problem I think Linn have is that they priced the LP12 50th at a number that is about twice the price of their Klimax model. The main improvement of the LP12 50th over the Klimax is the Bedrok plinth. Therefore, if Linn priced the plinth alone at $25K+ it would be a stretch ( albeit there are folks who would be happy to pay that), and they cannot price the Bedrok at a slightly higher level than a new standard Linn LP12 plinth, as that would certainly hurt their LP12 50th sales; so you see how in some ways they painted themselves into a corner.

@daveyf 

The LP12-50s are all gone. Linn didn’t have the capacity to make the Bedrok plinth upgrade until they’d fulfilled all the LP12-50 orders. 

The improved sonic performance of the LP12-50 is not entirely due to the plinth. Also, there were other costs going into it than just the plinth. 

I really don’t think the average LP12-50 customer would care what has subsequently happened with the Bedrok upgrade.

It takes nothing away from the specialness of what they bought. OK, that specialness wouldn’t appeal to the likes of you and me, but they look at it differently from us. The only person I know who bought one is the director of a hifi retailing company.

All other things being equal, there’s no way Linn would charge more than they have to for an upgrade. That just isn’t in their best strategic interests. It’s a fact of life that the more a product costs the less units are sold. The more top notch LP12s are out there and the more competitively priced they are, the better it is for the future of Linn. They envisage more LP12 upgrades in future and need a market for them.

They are not going to shoot themselves in the foot by unnecessarily pricing their products any higher than they need to be to pay for their R&D and sustain their profits. That would risk killing the golden goose.

@newton_john   I believe there is a LP12 50th on this site for sale. Has been listed for a while now, and at a discounted price. Also, I have heard that they are actually not sold out yet.

"No way Linn would charge more than they have to for an upgrade"??? LOL. OK.