For reasons that have as much to do with why the creek does or doesn’t rise as anything, almost all the UK-manufactured electronics I’ve reviewed over the years were from dCS of Cambridge. Through 2023, no electronics from Linn or a host of other UK-based companies have crossed the threshold of my music room.
That situation changed when, soon after New Year’s, a pair of Linn’s 60lb Klimax Solo 800 monoblock amplifiers ($90,000/pair) arrived from Scotland. Right away, they delighted me with their ease of maneuverability, handsome, uncluttered look, and relative compactness. Given their impressive power output—400W into 8 ohms, 800W into 4 ohms, and a whopping 1.2kW into 2 ohms—the Klimax Solo 800s set a record for highest price per watt and per pound among class-AB monoblocks I’ve reviewed.
The Klimax Solo 800 had not yet been released when an early pair arrived for review. Information about it began to appear online only well after the review period began.1 There is no manual, because every Linn product is dealer-installed: It’s the dealer’s responsibility to make sure you’re well-informed. Besides, “the amp is designed to plug-and-play, as it were,” Brand Manager Joe Rodger told me in an email. For those who want something to read, a “Linn Docs” wiki for the Solo 800 can serve as what Rodger termed a “no-frills encyclopedia.”2
Every recording of great artistry I heard sounded coherent, ordered, perfectly in place, and musical to a T.
To learn about the Solo 800, I Zoomed with Murray Smith, the electronics team leader who initiated the project that led to the Klimax Solo 800 and who worked on its Adaptive Bias Control system, and Linn Senior Electronic Design Engineer Nina Roscoe, the design lead for the Klimax Solo 800. Years ago, Linn sponsored Roscoe’s attendance at Cambridge University, providing sufficient industrial electronics manufacturing experience to allow her to take her second- and third-year exams. When she finished her studies, she spent a year or two at Linn, doing some work on the long-discontinued Klout amplifier before moving on.
“It was a really good experience,” she said. “It’s a good educational system—one that actually gets a design engineer to spend lots of time in manufacturing. You understand how the products that you make are built and learn the implications of the design decisions you make. The process creates reliable products and makes for long-term customers.”
New product, new design goals
At Linn, the Klout was followed by the Solo 500. Intended for the smaller power market where the majority of loudspeakers present 4–8 ohm loads, it remains in production after almost 25 years. Eventually, acceding to requests for a higher power monoblock that could drive larger speakers with lower impedances,
