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
128x128uberwaltz

Showing 5 responses by markmendenhall

Recently purchased a new Ace Spacedeck and 10" Ace Anna arm fitted with a Kiseki Purpleheart NS cartridge.  Replaced a 15 year old original Spacedeck/Spacearm fitted with an Ortofon Cadenza Bronze cartridge which I donated to a good buddy in need of a quality vinyl outfit.  Love both cartridges with a nod towards the Kiseki in that it provides more detail and a bigger soundstage than the Ortofon.  Both are sweet, highly engaging, and musical sounding cartridges which in my experience work well with the Nott tonearms.  From a practical standpoint though, the nod goes to the Ortofon.  Two items of note re:  the Kiseki; 1) the cantilever's low angle and proximity to the long and flat bottom of the wooden cartridge body creates issues with warped records which I never experienced with the Cadenza Bronze.  The architecture of the Ortofon allows for warped records to pass underneath without touching the cartridge body, unlike the Kiseki.  I've invested in a couple Vinyl Flat record flatteners and am much more careful when spinning records, being careful to check in advance if an album is warped.  As far as reported 'hum' issues, I've never experienced that with either Nott.  As far as set up issues?  Not a problem!  I have my very experienced dealer do that for me, way beyond my pay grade!  As far as the Nott tables sounding 'dark', I can't really relate to that either, neutral maybe, but not dark. That said, my preference is towards neutrality, I don't like a tipped up top end because of the etched and bright sound often associated with it on certain recordings.  I'll sacrifice the last "n'th" of detail if it means the remaining 99.999% sounds like music.  The Notts paired with either of the above mentioned cartridges provide plenty of detail for my tastes.     
The 2nd point I meant to make was that the Kiseki took at least 40 - 50 hours to shake the bulk of the zip out of it (my experience) - way too hot for my tastes to begin with; that's somewhere between 60 and 70 albums, then it begins to settle in.  Both Upscale and Hollywood tell me that at 100 hours I can consider it 'broken in'.  I also have a Walker Audio motor controller that the Nott motor is plugged into.  I believe the motor controller helps with the overall analog presentation as well. 
I’m beginning to believe that another reason that components I own and enjoy which others claim to sound dark, veiled, imprecise, or short on detail, and which I find sound opposite those descriptions, has to do with the extremely low noise floor I enjoy in my system. Both my Nottingham turntable and my Sonus Faber Olympica III speakers have often been described by contributors on A-gon forums in terms I’ve listed above. Consider upfront components which are part of my system: a First Sound PD III linestage with dual mono construction, S upgrade, dual power supplies and NOS GE 5670 triodes; a Cary Audio PH-302 mk II phono stage with 4 NOS 1950’s RCA 6SL7’s and external power supply I had Cary build, a Core Power Technologies EquiCore 1800 power conditioner, plus a Pass X250.8, and I believe you have the makings for a very quiet, low noise floor system. First Sound’s Mr. Emmanual Go makes frequent reference to lowering the noise floor when discussing his products and upgrade paths; low noise floor is one of his primary objectives. My interpretation? Lower the noise floor and more music is presented. The music doesn’t ’compete’ with noise when signal meets speakers. At the loudness levels I listen to, (rarely an ’eleven’, sometimes just loud enough to clear the room, but usually just loud enough to allow for slightly elevated conversation in a fairly big room), now that I think of it, I’m not aware of noise in between cuts on albums. There’s lead-in noise when initially cueing albums, but after cut 1, I just don’t hear anything but music, and if there is surface noise, it is so quiet it draws no attention to itself. I’m certain this is not a new topic and much has been written about it, just thought I’d mention it given the comments re: Nottingham turntables’ sonic signatures.
The most unfortunate part of this entire hobby is we are limited by the quality of every source recording, no matter what the medium.  We can ramp up the $, the technology, the expertise, the materials, the designs, the manufacturing, but in the end, if a mediocre source recording is our beginning, we can make it listenable, but rarely excellent.  I’ve found both Sonus Faber and Nottingham products very adept at excellent reproduction of high quality sources, and at the same time able to make poor source recordings more than ‘listenable’.  As is often said: it’s all about the music.  I think Franco Serblin and Tom Fletcher are of similar philosophies; strip away what gets in the way, leaving only the music; much like sculptors - just remove the unnecessary material and leave the masterpiece.