townsend rock reference mkv

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!

Uktel I have tried the Decca International Unipivot and the Ultracraft unipivot arms on my Rocks with mixed results. They seem to require tweaking with every single record.

The Decca is the worst because since each record is a hair's thickness different in thickness, the arm tilts over a bit on each different size. The tilt is not consistant, it either goes one way or the other. Also the arm-lift is useless. I have tried to use a variety of relatively high tracking force cartridges in this arm (Deccas, Dynavector 20A & 20B, Fidelity Research FR 1, Linn Klyde) because these were the only ones I could play at all in the Decca arm. When they did line up straight, the sound was incredibly good and super smooth. I just wasn't sure I wanted to spend 25 minutes setting up a cartridge/tonearm every time I wanted to play a 20 minute album.

The Ultracraft was different. A few lifts up and down by hand and it would eventually track straight up-and-down. But the heavy tracking cartridges all sounded average in the arm. I used it only for very compliant cartridges and for these it sounded like heaven. The bass stopped being boomy, and got very clear and extended. The highs got greater clarity and more extension sparkle. The problem here is that we have effectively eliminated being able to use any MC or Decca cartridge with the Ultracraft arm.

I did have some remarkable success with a Dynavector 10x (the original one) when Max visited my house to help me set up a Rock Elite for a Consumer Electronics Show. I also put a Fidelity Research FR 44 into it and it was so pure and dreamy that I never wanted to take it out, but I had to take it out to set up a Madrigal Carnegie (which didn't sound any better than in one of my straight line tonearms) and I never got around to putting the Fidelity Research cartridge back because I had changed tonearms by then. I only have a few tonearm mount boards for my Rock that can use any arm. The other Rock I have is dedicated to an Excalibur arm.

So it's a mixed bag of results. I gave up when unipivots only worked about 30% of the time in the Rock system. I did find that extra heavy rear pivot damping worked best to counterbalance the extremely high damping at the cartridge end. Otherwise the tonearms just seem to ooze over towards one side or the other although I've seen some tweakers who have rigged up outboard offset balance weights they can tweak for each lift-and-drop of their tonearms, but now we are getting way too involved for me. I like a tonearm I can play through records 20 or 30 times before it needs any tweaking, but that's just me.

I

Uktel, maybe the offset mini-counterweight idea is work-able for you. I've never tried a Graham arm on the Rocks I have so I didn't have an immediate comment but I checked my notebook and made another post about this subject. What cartridge is working so well in your current Graham/Rock set-up and what tracking force are you using? Good luck

Hi Desktop
The graham phantom is quite unlike any other unipivot arm i have used including previous graham arms.
In fact I do tend to find that in use i actually forget it is a unipivot at all!
To mount it on the rock was no simple task either.
I ended up having to use 4 spacers under the armmount because the vta pillar was fouling the plinth.
At the moment i am using a heavily modded koetsu onyx and also have a jan allaerts mc1b mk2.
The results i am getting are IMHO spectacular and i have not had to do any meddling with setup for different records other than vta [if you have it why not use it?].
I track the koetsu at 1.85 grams.
I have not tried the JA yet but have had great results on the phantom previously at 2 grams on other decks.
I didn't however get to do an A/B comparison with my carts between phantom and excalibur so i cannot tell you any more on that particular subject
But to my ears they are both great tonearms on the rock.
All the best
Terry

Hello All,
While working for the Dept.Of The ARmy in Germany, I had the opportunity to purchase an Elite Rock Turntable with Excalabur Tonearm. This was in 1987. I went to visit a small audio shop in England and purchased the Rock used for USA $5690. Early on Max Townsend was the go-to person for bearing fluid, belts, etc. After a while he disappeared. Now I need bearing, trough fluid and a belt, but don't know where to obtain these items now.

Needless to say the Rock turntable has performed flawlessly without a whimper. In my humble opinion, it was/is still one of the very best turntables around today. I don't see a need to buy anything else. And by the way, the Excalabur tonearm is excellent and can handle most of the new moving coils.

In particular, I was elated to see the post from Albert who actually worked with Max T for a while. I am also delighted to hear from and know that there are others who use the Rock TT even now.

Here are my present concerns:

Are there any upgrades for the early Elite Rock TT?
Where can I obtain trough and bearing fluids?
Where can I get a belt for this marvolous TT?
Finally, my turntable has an outrigger transformer that controls the TT speed. Can this be updated or removed entirely and replaced?

Thanks again for everyone who contributed posts regarding the Rock Turntables. I applaud you and would love hearing from each of you.