townsend rock reference mkv

Oh, the usual audio envy type of insanity!

Actually, I haven't found a place to rent yet(until this housing bubble pops), so I have no idea how much I will have. I currently live in a 4 bedroom, 2,600 sq. ft house with a living room that is 15'x20', but all the rental houses I've been looking are half that size, especially the rooms.

So, the IM-Bens with dual subwoofers will probably be way too much for where I'm going live the next year or two. I can't imagine selling them now that Terry Cain has passed away, there's simply too much of his soul in them. But, I may gets some coaxial cornerhorns for the meantime.

But, if I am able to find something of suitable size, in my price range, then I'd love to buy the Art Audio PX-25 monoblocks that Audiofeil had up for sale last week. The stereo version i have is incredible and the monos would be sublime.

In the more realistic realm, I'd like to try out a used SME Phantom, Triplanar, Schroeder, etc. Also, a tubed phono pre like a used Wright Sound AG, Thor 2000, or Art Audio Vinyl One. I also badly need an equipment rack, but have to wait and see what type of room I am going to end up in - concrete slab or suspend wood.

Crazy hobby were in - make money, then spend it just as fast.

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.

Dale Pitcher of Essence speaker fame, sent me the original Rock plus Excalibur tonearm back before you were the distributor. The exact year is not clear in my mind but it seems like 1982 or a bit later.

I remember the sound was exceptional and the top plate got very hot from the AC motor, still it was a fantastic table.

Steve McCormack represented Oracle back then and I was (and still am) a friend of his. The Rock was moved out and the Oracle moved in. The thing that saved the Oracle was my new Breuer arm and cartridge that I picked up in Switzerland.

Good stuff, thanks for jogging my memory.

DESKTOP
Thank you for chiming in with a truly great post
one of the main improvements is in the isolation
max says that the origional suffered because the suspension and trougth were tuned at the same frequency
now the suspension [for want of a better word] is tuned to 2hz
the platter is also a new material.
this i do hope will be my final turntable
How many times have I said that before?
all the best
terry

Uktel, one of the great things about the early Elite Rock was that the brass accordian isolators could be tuned by the owner (it wasn't simple but Max showed me how). I don't know if he just didn't want people fussing with the dampers but he didn't retain that feature.

This Rock TT may be your last (I've had mine for 20 years), but since every cartridge "step-up" is audible on these TTs you can keep upgrading there. I have found that while some of my linear arm TTs get superior results out of certain cartridges, the more a cartridge design is aimed at having higher compliance, the better it can sound on a Rock. Also there are some cartridges with what I call "resonant tonearm interaction" and the Rock eliminates that. So some cartridges that don't perform well in any other circumstance, can sound stupendous on the Rocks.

The Rocks are so neutral sounding that they make a great test reference TT. While you might find another TT - Arm combo that serendipitously sounds slightly better, 95% of the time, the sound you will get out of a well set-up Rock will be the best a cartridge and arm are able to produce. Rocks are messy (especially if your house is dusty or has allot of natural air from the outside circulating through), but a Rock TT can reduce the brittleness of most MC cartridges and it will eliminate the excessive bass of a MM cartridge. Matched to any high quality, Line Contact Stylus cartridge the results will be jaw dropping. AND the "steady hand" provided by the silicone bath, will make all your styli and records last longer. It's a win - win - win situation.