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Townshend Rock, or Sota... Classical music

Hello everyone,

I'm new on this forum, but I've been reading lots of extremely informative and interesting things here since a long time.

I'd like to ask a little advice... Since I'm maybe buying my first "serious" turntable. My priorities are clean and accurate reproduction, pitch stability, good detial retrieval (I listen almost only to classical music, and quite a lot of piano recordings).

I have following options:
- Townshend Rock Mk3 with Rega RB300 (maybe not in perfect condition, the clamp and the acryl platter are not perfectly even and there is always some up and down movement of cartridge and tonearm) - around 700 $
- Sota Star (with Papst DC motor) with Sumiko FT-3 tonearm, completely revised by a very experienced guy, vacuum and everything - around 1400 $
- Townshend Rock Reference with Excalibur tonearm, perfect - around 3000 $

The Rock Reference is a bit out of budget, but I may stretch to that. At the same time I'm really interested in the Sota with vacuum, since most of my records are bought second hand and... Well, I see that even the clamp of the Reference doesn't manage to make then really flat on the platter.

Or shall I go for a cheaper Japanese direct drive, like a Kenwood KD-990 or so?

Now I'm listening with a Beogram 8000 (Soundmith cart), a Technics SL-7, a Dual 721 - none of them really satisfying, expecially with piano or big, complex orchestral music. String quartets sound nice on the Beogram...

I know that everything depends also on cartridge and rest of the system - I'm keeping aroung 1000 $ for a new cart, and the rest of the system will come later, but quite soon.

Thanks for your advice!

Marco
mscili
roscoeiii's avatar
roscoeiii
1,155 posts
 
I am a huge Rock fan. The issues with the Rock 3 would concern me.

But damn, a Rock Reference. Wow. This is supposed to be a mighty fine table.

I have not heard SOTA. But I don't see the kind of raves for their tables that the Rock gets. I am not sure that the vacuum is necessarily going to deliver the types of benefits that the trough gives you on the Rock. The Townshend 7 clamp does a great job on my mildly warped records. But if warped records are an issue, I'd suggest just getting a Vinyl Flat to take care of that, and focus on other, more important aspects of turntable design than flattening LPs.
schubert
7,386 posts
 
Whoops, I see the FT-3 is one piece , I must have confused it with the Sumiko MMT .
I'd still take the SOTA as it does have the "black background" that classical needs.Whether a reference is worth $1600 bucks more is up to you.
mscili OP
4 posts
 
Thanks for the input!

Actually, one of the reason why I'm still considering the Rock Reference is... That probably I won't have another chance of getting one. But it will take years before I manage to bring the rest of my system to a similar level. The engineering on the Rock makes sense, and that of the SOTA too - they are different. I can imagine that the vacuum would bring even better contact between record and platter compared to the clamping system of the Rock, and provide even better stability of certain parameters, but of course it won't dampen tonearm and cartridge resonance as the through does on the Rock - that's a different thing. I've heard the Referece for a while, in the lower register it's quite incredible.

So I'm still thinking... Maybe some more comments will also point out some other aspects of these turntables. Thanks a lot!
ebm
9,311 posts
 
TW turntable better than both of these.
rafr
21 posts
 
Marco,
I have never heard a Rock Reference, But I have a Rock 3 and lucky enough to have a Rock V. Properly set up, these are some of the best sounding TTs ever made. The tone arm dampening system may turn people off, but is very easy to use. The Rock Reference is reported to be an outstanding TT. If I were you I would get the Rock Reference. It is an incredible TT and very rare. You may not be able find another one. The Sota may be more available at a later date. When I got the Rock V, I put everything I had to get it. I, then slowly brought up the rest of my system, much like you are thinking. I have never, regretted this. Best of luck with your decision.
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