A font, a seal for the British Crown, a book, a watchOS watch face, an application’s philosophical direction… LoveFrom’s accomplishments are many and varied, but with the exception of a paper-red nose for Comic Relief, Jony Ive’s dream team carefully stayed away from the material products. Until the presentation of the Sondek LP12-50 vinyl turntable, a reinterpretation of the famous LP12 celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Scottish manufacturer Linn Products.
picture Linn.
“In early 2022,” says Gilad Tiefenbrun, “I received a request from an unknown sender on LinkedIn to meet British design guru Jony Ive.” Of course, I immediately deleted it, thinking it was spam. A few days later, however, Linn’s general manager and Apple’s former “chief designer” met on FaceTime via intermediary screens.
picture Linn.
Jony Ive has never hidden his attraction to the LP12 turntable, which has been in continuous production since 1973 and has been a source of controversy for fifty years. Hamish Robertson founded Ariston to market the RD11 turntable, which featured the famous “single point” bearing. The parts were made by Castle Precision Engineering, a company run by Jack Tiefenbrun whose son Ivor Tiefenbrun rushed to set up Linn to sell rebranded LP12 RD11 turntables.
picture Linn.
A few threats and a lawsuit later, Robertson disappeared from the shelves and Linn started his marketing machine. It’s the Linn way, or the wrong way: the Scottish manufacturer is known for its stubbornness bordering on dogmatism and pathological aversion to objective measurements. Does that remind you of someone? “We identified a few areas where we could make slight improvements and smoothly evolve the current design,” says Jony Ive, anything else would have been sacrilegious.
picture Linn.
LoveFrom’s intervention was therefore limited to softening the curves of the base, replacing a plastic switch with a metal switch and designing hinges capable of keeping the hood open in any position. The two companies have “no contractual obligation or financial obligation,” Jony Ives Studio intervened on a voluntary basis because of the beauty of the gesture. But Linn is not a charity, so the 250 examples of the Sondek LP12-50 will sell for €59,500, double the production price of the Klimax LP12.