townsend rock reference mkv

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.

Desktop
Have you ever tried a unipivot on your rock?
I will be using a graham phantom with jan allaerts or koetsu onyx.
I am quite confident that this combo will work if i dont use the damping on the graham bearing.
I dont feel that double damping will be desireable
However
I am an avid tweaker so who knows?

Ill have to answer my own question on this one because
I now have the deck up and running
The graham arm works a treat on the rock v.
This deck is just jaw droppingly awesome!
I listened to it today for eight hours!
And i still think i can optimise the setup for even better results!