I was for a short while Max Townsend's distributor for the USA. His revolutionary new turntables (in 1985/6/7) were the Rock and Elite Rock turntables. I still have 2 of these models, one with the Excalibur tonearm and one with a couple of mounting boards for whatever tonearms I happen to feel is well-matched to a currently favored cartridge. Max didn't actually sell me the 3 turntables I got from him, he traded the turntables to me for loudspeakers I designed for him.
I was for a while in the 80s the chief loudspeaker engineer and a system designer for Buena Vista during the design and/or building of EPCOT, Tokyo Disneyland, the MGM Studio Tour and EuroDisneyland. My development as an audio engineer started during a time when I made my first acquaintance with Ed Meitner, while Ed worked for the Celestron distributor in Montreal and I worked with Al Leccese (now of Audio Analyst). Along the road I learned from people like Nelson Pass (still have 2 of his terrific electronic crossovers), Poul Ladegaard of B&K Instruments and John Beyer of B&K Components (who I still regard as a friend, though we can't seem to get a good time to play golf arranged). Other turntable makers loaned me their products, but none seemed to sound as musical as the Rock.
Max was/is very fussy about making exceptional turntables and in comparisons with every other turntable using a non-tangential arm, the Rocks always sounded best. I always liked the EMT 927 and 950 turntables, Goldmunds, a few of the Japanese tangential arm turntables, and the Micro Seikis but if you have the chance to audition and/or buy a Rock from either the first few years Max made them or one of the last 2 series, don't worry about what you are spending, just buy it and marvel at the music. If you ever need money at a later date you'll usually recover your initial investment by selling (sadly) your Rock. Models like the MkII and MkIII are also very good, but cost should be measured vs performance.
It's difficult to describe the "sound" of the Rocks since the cartridge is always going to be much more variable and most loudspeakers are not the audio microscopes they should be (ruthlessly revealing the flaws of the "front end" while transmitting all of the beauty in the source that is possible). Amplifiers can be "less than transparent" also. Sadly each new post-WWII development in sources has seemed to be a step down. Quality commercially made 7 1/2 IPS 1:1 2 track tape copies of masters were better than vinyl, and vinyl was better than cassettes and cassettes were better than CDs (except for SACDs which are as good as vinyl), which are all vastly superior to even the best MP3s.
Almost no digitally recorded music sounds good to me (I'm a million years old but last year I still max'd out the 19khz audiology tests previous to neck surgery) and once studios decided that a sampling rate of less than 100Khz was acceptable (there were 3M digital recorders in 1983 that would record at more than 110khz, but they weren't "economical" enough for the industry), post-1990s musical recordings went downhill pretty fast. I can listen to music recorded after 1990 the same way I listen to 78s. Quality music might be there if I listen through all the distortion and noises, but I'd rather the distortions and noises weren't there.
Home theater has ruined what was once a progressive audio industry. I applaud the continuing efforts of Martin Logan, John Beyer, Dan D'Agostino, Nelson Pass, Max Townsend, Dynavector, Ortofon, VdH and a few others to produce high quality transducers and playback equipment needed to get exceptional music out to consumers.
I'm lucky that I have a library full of the safety back-up tapes made when 2 track masters were produced from final mixdowns, as well as a number of live recordings made off the mixing console during concert tours. This gives me a reasonable standard of reference. It is Possible to put together a decent playback system now-a-days. But great source material is harder to come by as vinyl becomes more scarce. Considering how costly used records are, and their limited availability, I'm surprised people still try to build record collections at all.
Good luck to all of you building vinyl record collections and especially to those of you who have the sense to invest in a Rock turntable. I haven't spoken to Max Townsend in 20 years and I have no affiliation to him or his current enterprise, but from my own experience and the experiences of a few friends who have auditioned his latest products, a Rock turntable is still an investment for a lifetime. The 2 I have are about 20 years old and still work very well.
