The Rock is a truly iconoclastic turntable.

With its trough of silicone fluid and high-mass design, it stands out from the crowd.

Ever since the Cranfield Institute of Technology developed the Rock in the late seventies, Max Townshend has been the only person licensed to use the design, but its radical nature has not always been easy to sell and the Mk V is the first Rock to be made for a couple of years.

The best turntable we've ever seen

The problem is, Max is an engineering perfectionist who finds it difficult to sign-off any project which has the potential for improvement. And this time it has paid off, for the Rock V is the most remarkable turntable Townshend has ever made and quite possibly the best we've ever heard.

This is partly due to the new Excalibur II tonearm, a design that was built from the ground up to work with a damping trough - hence the two-layer magnesium rigging at the headshell. This spaceframe construction encapsulates the ethos of the whole arm, which is to be as stiff as possible.

According to Max, if a pick-up arm can be resonated, then this adds noise to the signal as the resonance finds its way into the coils of the cartridge.

Built by a perfectionist

The Excalibur II is built around the bearing structure of a Rega RB300, because Townshend prefers ball race bearings for their stiffness.

Max considers this part of the Rega design to be completely sound. He is less keen on the magnesium pipe, however, replacing it with a stainless steel tube that's damped and scarf-jointed to the complicated headshell.

The headshell isn't slotted (which is usually the case), but instead, has two pairs of mounting holes that suit the majority of cartridges. Fitting can be rather more fiddly than usual, however, even with the arm tube removed (something that fortunately can be done very easily and quickly with a single bolt).

For the uninitiated, the purpose of the trough of silicone is to damp vibration created by the arm/cartridge resonance, as a result of energy that the stylus picks up as it traces the groove.

A silicone fluid of precisely the correct viscosity anchors the headshell end of the arm as solidly as it is held by the bearings at the pivoting end.

Improved suspension

The Rock V differs from its predecessor by virtue of its platter material and the suspension system it uses.