Excellent Linn Wakonda Pre Amp...

With Remote, fully working, well cared for..

Pre amp ONLY the Ikemi CD player is listed separately..

Please study the photographs in order to establish the condition of the item, it also helps establish any model varations which often exist with vintage items, please satisfy yourself before bidding, if you require additional pictures or information please contact us...

I will produce a video to show items working where possible please ask if not one in the listing..

Due to my declining health i have reluctantly decided to clear some of my collection of analogue vintage hifi and photographic equipment.

I rely very heavily on members of my family to help with postage and packing which revolves around their work and family commitments, i am afraid i cant always offer immediate despatch.

If your purchase is urgent please email immediately and I will do my utmost to ensure a rapid despatch..

I never seek to profit from postage and use the most cost effective option, We source recycled packaging where we can and package all items securely,  I will combine shipping if I possibly can.

INTERNATIONAL POSTAGE...

Costs have increased dramatically recently and are an estimate and vary from country to country..

Please Email for best cost effective solution especially Europe as it may be cheaper..

HiFi Review

LINN WAKONDA PREAMPLIFIER

Linn Products, Limited, of Glasgow, Scotland, is unique among consumer audio manufacturers in several ways. Perhaps its most obvious distinction, though hardly the most important, is in the nomenclature of its products. The name of virtually every Linn component contains at least one letter "K" (in a few cases an "X" is substituted).

Much more significant is the quality of construction and performance built into every Linn product. As I saw on a visit to the ultramodern Linn facility a few years ago, every unit is assembled, checked, and signed off on by a single person (whose name actually appears on the product). This traditional craftsman's approach contrasts with, and complements, Linn's fully computerized and automated warehouse, whose robot vehicles deliver parts to the assembly stations in the factory itself.

Over the past ten years, we have tested and reported on seven Linn components, ranging from loudspeakers and turntables to preamplifiers, power amplifiers, and integrated amplifiers. They have all shared the fundamental characteristics of Linn products (in addition to unconventional names): superb construction and distinctive, attractive styling, excellent performance, and prices that, while not shocking by current high-end standards, were well above those of good mass-market components.

Linn says the Wakonda preamplifier is named for the god of an unspecified tribe of American Indians. I suspect that the letter "k" is the principal link between Native American religion and Scottish audio products.

The Wakonda, like several other Linn electronic components, is a compact black box whose front panel has no knobs or other very obvious controls except a rectangular power button. Its other visible features include a small green power pilot light, a headphone jack, and a small display window. Below the display window are six flat control keys, flush with the panel, that are clearly marked to show their functions, including mute (on/off), volume (up/down), input (stepping in either direction through the available inputs), and balance (left/right). These buttons, pressed in combinations, also provide mono/stereo mode switching and independent selection of sources for listening and recording. The volume adjustment is in sixty-one steps, from 0 to 60 (30 is the default level at power-up), and the balance adjustment is in nineteen steps, from +9 to -9, with 0 corresponding to equal gain in both channels. All the control operations are silent both mechanically and electronically.

The Wakonda's back panel has gold-plated phono-jack inputs for all sources, plus monitor-loop jacks (outputs and inputs) for two tape decks and two parallel pairs of line outputs. On the basic version of the preamplifier, all the inputs are line-level, but the ones normally labeled aux 2 can be assigned instead to an optional factory-installed phono stage for either moving-magnet or moving-coil cartridges (our test unit had the moving-magnet option).

A few seconds after the Wakonda is turned on, it shows "Cd" and "30" in its display window. You can then set your desired input source and volume level by pressing the appropriate control buttons on the front panel. Alternatively, the supplied wireless remote control can be used for any of the Wakonda's operating functions (other than switching the power on or off), as well as those of other compatible Linn components.

Like the Majik-I integrated amplifier, the Wakonda is designed for expansion of its functions within its compact dimensions. The back panel has a "Sneaky" module slot for that purpose. A Sneaky line-driver or line-receiver module adapts the unit for multiroom systems, or the Sneaky Kudos FM tuner can be incorporated into the Wakonda chassis.

Operation of the Linn Wakonda, despite its unconventional control system, was easy and largely intuitive. The instruction manual is clear and explicit. Measuring its performance was equally straightforward. The frequency response was ruler-flat over most of the audio range, falling off only 0.5 dB at 20 Hz and 0.1 dB at 20 kHz. High-frequency response hit -3 dB at just over 100 kHz. Total harmonic distortion plus noise (THD+N) was 0.025 percent just before clipping occurred, at 9 volts output.

The Wakonda also proved to be a very quiet preamplifier through both its high-level and phono inputs. And not only were there no signal-switching transients, but all control operations were totally silent and usually gradual rather than abrupt.

Recalling the unusually clean internal layout of other Linn products we have tested, I also examined the Wakonda's interior. It was one of the neatest I have seen, with extensive use of surface-mount technology and virtually no visible wires (the major exceptions being about 4 inches of multiconductor ribbon cable to the front-panel display and a single twisted pair to the pilot light).

Linn's literature refers to the Wakonda's "Brilliant Power Supply" (evidently a switching-mode supply) as being responsible for much of the preamplifier's performance. The most obvious evidence of that in our tests was the extremely low noise level. The Brilliant Power Supply consists mainly of a single cylindrical unit, about 4 inches in diameter and 2 inches high, that apparently houses the power transformer and electronic circuits, leaving a pair of 10,000-microfarad filter capacitors as its principal external components.

The Linn Wakonda is an excellent preamplifier, above reproach in both performance and ease of operation. To use it most effectively, however, you should read its twenty-page operating manual carefully (a good idea with any sophisticated piece of equipment). Once that is absorbed, the Wakonda's operational simplicity relative to most home audio components is both striking and refreshing, yet its versatility would be hard to fault.

Although not inexpensive by any means, the Wakonda is a good value no matter how you look at it - or how you listen to it