Linn Products

Well into its fifth decade of designing and engineering systems, the privately-owned Scottish company Linn has been at the forefront of audio technology.

Its Sondek LP12 turntable has been cited as one of the most important hi-fi products of the last 40 years and “arguably the most popular high-end turntable of all time.”

Started by Ivor Tiefenbrun in the 1970s and now run by his son Gilad, Linn is a classic niche manufacturing business that emerged from the tinkering skills of an engineer into an enterprise that has invested for the long-term, even when it hurts. It has ploughed more than £20m into R&D over the past decade into developing its music streaming system.

“Linn has to come out the best in any [sound] test. Otherwise we don’t have a business,” says Gilad in this interview in The Times.

And the world will continue to seek out the best in class for when it comes to audio hardware. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re in Britain, Germany, America, Japan or China,” Gilad notes in this interview with the Director magazine, “everywhere you go there’s a group of discerning people who have that curiosity, that drive, to feel the emotion of music more and really connect with it.”

Every Linn product bears the name of the person who made it, in the company’s purpose-built factory outside of Glasgow.

Linn currently exports to more than 50 countries, with turnover at £18.1m in its last financial year. “It’s rarely one large improvement that makes a great product – it’s usually 100 small ones that add up to a giant leap forward,” Gilad Tiefenbrun told Director magazine in this interview. In the autumn of 2019, the firm secured additional loan finance to support its R&D.

Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo8BAKZqEHI

You can book a visit for a factory tour here: https://www.linn.co.uk/find-a-shop#visit