With the Kore mounted, it was time to introduce the Ekos 2. So I had to be more deliberate in my selection of springs: the very stiffest near the tonearm, medium stiffness near the cartridge, softest near the motor. The Nima is a very light tonearm the Ekos is quite heavy. The Mober subchassis has done a great job and made a huge positive difference in my system. Then I woke up bright and early and got to work. I would’ve loved to have tried an Ekos SE, but, so expensive… (I love the name Ekos, by the way - a Linn-ized spelling of Écosse, the French name for Scotland.) Let’s get startedĪs I like to do, I stripped everything down and leveled the jig the night before. I got the Ekos used in very good condition from an owner who raved about its authoritative bass. So I had to do two things at once here: change a machined-from-aluminum Mober subchassis for a hybrid-construction (some machined parts, some screwed and glued sheet aluminum) Linn Kore and swap out a unipivot Nima for a gimbaled Ekos 2. (Edmund of Mober has offered to let me test one of his subchassis for Linn, but given pandemic madness, it didn’t arrive in time.) I’ll be trying three tonearms in this LP12MF - Nima, Ekos, Aro - and they all have different geometries. But since one-piece subchassis don’t have interchangeable armboards, you need to totally change them for arms with different geometries. In terms of methodology, I’m not crazy about changing two things at once. I mean, there’s no way a cartridge that well-reviewed (and expensive) could sound that bad. But I suspected that, whatever the problem was, it would probably go away once I’d swapped it onto a different tonearm and subchassis. For reasons I still don’t really understand, this fancy moving coil cartridge made my system sound way worse. My previous “upgrade,” the Dynavector XX-2 cartridge, was a bit of a disaster.

Indeed, I’m relying more than ever on music - and I’m grateful to have lots of picky, precise, time-consuming work to keep me busy every couple of weeks. Scary as it’s been, it certainly hasn’t dampened my enthusiasm for my LP12 Modification Frenzy or for listening to music in general. I’ve been in coronavirus lockdown since mid-March, working from home and only going outside to jog and buy groceries. Since my last major installation, the world has turned completely upside down. Installing the Linn Ekos 2 Tonearm and Kore Subchassis

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