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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
effischer
477 posts
 
FWIW, I've run my Sota Sapphire non-vacuum table since I bought it new back when. It has the external power supply. After listening to a number of other tables over the years, I haven't heard anything that would make me "upgrade" from it. My Graham arm was a revelation as was the DV XXII Mk 2. The rig performs flawlessly on jazz, rock and classical. Dead silent background. Quiet enough that even though I had an opportunity to buy a Star, the very idea of any ambient noise introduced by the vacuum pump stopped me in my tracks.

It's always best if you can do an audition and so come to your own conclusions, but that's my two cents. Good luck & happy listening either way!
mscili OP
4 posts
 
Thanks again to everyone. One more question: I didn't notice before that the Townshend Excalibur tonearm in the first version allows only one position of the cartridge in the headshell - no possibility of twisting it or moving it forward or backwards (just two simple holes...). How do you align different cartridges on such a headshell? You move the armboard all together? Or you just stick to those carts, that work with that fixed geometry?
It's kind of strange...
noromance's avatar
noromance
1,780 posts
 
I would imagine it is aligned by design while mounted in the Rock. It is a little odd for sure.
mscili OP
4 posts
 
Since a few weeks I wanted to come back here and thank again everyone for the advice in August. After auditioning the Sota, after thinking a lot, I went for the Rock Reference. The Sota didn't have the same solidity and effortlessness in complex musical passages (of course, this may be depending on cartridges and tonearms too) and it was tonally less coherent. The Rock Reference makes a cheap Technics MM cartridge (with Jico SAS stylus) sound totally different and incredibly much better than other turntables. But of course the next step will be a new cart... Maybe even a not so expensive AT-OC9 could be a good idea, since I feel that the Reference is probably never going to sound harsh and to suffer from resonances in the higher end of the frequency range.

I'll see. In the meantime, thanks for the advice and a nice Christmas time to everyone!
rafr
21 posts
 
Congratulations. You made a legendary purchase. A very rare and great table. You will find it will also make some noise on some records much more tolerable.
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