Looking for thoughts from Nottingham Analog table owners


Really like the looks and the build quality of the Nottingham tables, and it does not hurt that I am originally from Nottingham, England to start with...lol
But I have read a few reviews that claim they are pretty tricky to set up and some suffer 60hz hum fairly easily?
Would like to hear from actual owners, your arms, carts etc
Would be upgrading from a Funk Firm Vector with Grado Gold which is deathly quiet as far as hum and in its own right is very musical in my rig.
Thank you
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Showing 3 responses by inna

Tom Fletcher designed the Spacedeck/Spacearm with MM cartridges in mind. The Nottingham cartidges, no longer made I guess, were based on Goldring MM. That's what I use, Goldring 1042. There is a lot of a sound in that cartridge if your components and cables are up to it. That said, I heard that many other cartridges, including not too heavy or/and too low compliance cartridges work quite well in the Spacedeck arm. Some really like Lyra Delos and Kiseki Purpleheart, both quite expensive. I myself am going to keep the Goldring until I upgrade the Acoustech phono to a high level tube phono stage. Then I will see and think. Others would suggest trying some great vintage cartridges. Yeah, this could be interesting, maybe.
You don't really need local support with Nottinghams. Larry from Hollywood Sound, the only dealer in the US, would assist you.
By the way, using adapters degrades the sound to unknown degree, it is better to have the cable rewired with RCAs unless of course you are thinking of a phono stage with XLR inputs. There are not many of them, though.
Nottingham is by no means a dark sounding table, but it is on a warmer side of neutral. My Goldring 1042 fully opened up after 100 hours, I think it was 110 or 120.
I am not surprised with the official Nottingham recommendation of Nagaoka. Nagaoka 500 is probably more refined than Goldring 1042, should be excellent choice.
Yes, Larry of Hollywood Sound really likes Spacedeck and he's been dealing with Nottinghams forever.
Yeah, low noise and low distortion are really important.
Overall, I think Nottingham owners are quite happy with the sound they get. They keep upgrading too but usually not the table itself.