When I had a space deck I had SRA, ( Silent Running Audio ) make a custom VR base specifically for it. Yes, it was expensive but I felt it was money well spent. ( about $800 some years ago ). Tried Stillpoints, did not like them on the Nottingham as well but I do use them on most everything else. |
Interesting about Stillpoints and Nottingham. Yes, $800 for the base is too much for me right now, which is not to say it wouldn't be worth it, I suspect it would. One day perhaps, I am going to keep my Spacedeck for a long time, at least for five-seven years, until I possibly upgrade to Hyperspace deck.
Davt, what did you upgrade your Nottingham to? |
ive been wondering the same thing. just getting the base changed out on my nott to a maple platform was huge!. ive been thinking of trying Herbies gliders and then some Grungebusters under platform. looks like he may have appropriate thread size but not sure about that.if so the cost to experiment is pretty low and i figure anything would be an improvement over what seems to be nothing exotic. |
I could also tear off that rubber and put Audio Selection steel cones in its place. They have the adhesive and are adjustable, $10 each from Audio Advisor. I am thinking about it. Should be an improvement, but you never really know until you try. Walker discs might work too, both with rubber feet and steel cones.
For now I ordered one Walker disk and am going to experiment by putting it on different pieces of my system and see if I can hear any difference. This won't answer the question about their effectiveness with Nott., I know, but I am curious. |
Sorry, I saw Audio Selections cones on Music Direct site. |
Inna, I upgraded my Nottingham to getting out of vinyl. Not really an upgrade but I wanted to simplify my system, de-clutter the house. I had always wondered what I would do if someone offered to buy all my albums and analog rig on the spot for a good price and about a year and a half ago that happened. Sold all the albums, TT, phono amp, record racks, ultrasonic cleaner, everything. I replaced it all with a MSB Analog DAC and Universal Media Transport Plus CD transport. Kept the same speakers and amps. Now, if I was going for the best sound, I would go vinyl. I just wanted to be more mobile and downsize. With the Nottingham TT the biggest benefits were in order of importance: 1. Ultrasonic cleaner, I loved this, great big benefit. 2. Benz Gullwing SLR cartridge. 3. but a close to the #2, Nottingham Heavy Kit. Great big benefit in improving slam, detail and clarity, 4. SRA base 5. Nottingham Wave mechanic power supply. I also tried the Walker and they were equally beneficial. The Spacedeck is a great TT. Oh, and I don't regret my move to pure digital but I can fully understand the draw to vinyl. |
Davt, you treated your Spacedeck very well, did everything for it to sing.
I think, my first upgrade will be either Nottingham Wave Mechanic or better interconnect from the phono stage, depending on opportunity. I currently use Purist Audio Maximus but would like to jump to either Proteus or Dominus. Then maybe SRA base or Heavy Kit, though I read that not everyone liked the Kit - they felt that something was lost while other things were gained.
I will never get rid of the analog, temporarily maybe if I have to, but I'll be back. |
I have the older Mentor TT. It came with the heavy kit and Wave Mechanic.
I agree with Davt. In order of improvements:
1) Upgrade from VPI to ultrasonic record cleaning (at 80KHz)
2) Upgrade from Mentor tonearm to Trans-Fi air bearing arm
3) Upgrade from Tracer IV to higher end Koetsu
4) Upgrade plinth
5) Upgrade to new motor and latest (matched) WM
6) Upgrade power
I think you could get the most bang for the buck by putting some thick-ish plywood between your maple block and the TT. Preferably, Baltic Birch or even Panzerholz or slate, but ordinary 1" ply should prove the concept. Then replace the rubber feet on the turntable with the cheapest metal cones you can find, along with metal discs to prevent the spikes from cutting into the wood.
Those were among the most important elements of my plinth change, and they are all good physics. BUT, you have to listen to the system as a whole, and the metal cones might improve the resolution too much. Use your ears and your good taste will guide you. |
Terry9, thank you. Yes, I have doubts about metal cones, they might give me ringing.
Why Baltic Birch and not, say, Brazilian Rosewood or Cocobolo? Or Ebony? In any case, it's an interesting idea.
I am not going to replace arm or cartridge soon - I prefer to jump when I upgrade not to move in small steps. Tweaking and tuning the system is another matter. Ultrasonic record cleaner costs thousands. I might have records cleaned by ultrasonic machine by someone else, but I will not take a risk by mailing my most valuable records, but I can send others. I don't have many records.
I just had an opportunity to upgrade the interconnect from phono, from Maximus to Colossus, but I didn't receive it yet. I think, I will try Walker discs too. I recently got just one 1/2" disc, and the biggest difference for the better it made was by sitting on top of my Nakamichi deck! The deck in turn sits on Boston Audio tuneblocks. So, maybe I should get two more and put them on the maple block - one near tonearm and another near motor. The discs are not expensive and can easily be returned. |
You want constrained layer damping to minimize the contribution of your motor to the signal. One layer tries to move against the next, but cannot - it is constrained. The result is heat, not motion. Plywood or slate does this. Brazilian Rosewood does not (although it does look wonderful - a thought - veneer some onto Panzerholz). But prove the concept first.
I doubt very much if metal cones will ring, especially in response to an outside signal. They will, however, limit transmission of vibration. You need to specify shape (cone) not cost. But, they may not work with your system as it is now - I had to insert a cork layer to dampen the sound until I upgraded the tonearm, at which point the cork layers came out and the sound blossomed. Stay empirical, but begin with the physics. |
I see. Brazilian Rosewood won't work. Great wood for making guitars, that's why it came to mind.
Not so simple with cones - they remove the vibration at best, then they return some of it. Yeah, shape and material matter. Audiopoints were good cones, no longer made. They work well with my integrated amp.
Probably Vibraplane would be best, but you never really know until you try. Still, you can't try eveything so to a degree you have to guess.
Physics, of course. But at times the laws of physics are so inconvenient. |
Inna, on a follow up note, I removed the little rubber feet from motor and table and replaced them with extra thick Herbies Grungebusters. I have only listened to a couple records so far but I can say with no hesitation they have cleaned up the sound, everything is more concise by a few degrees which in my system is appreciated. Similar experience to when I rolled in some nos tele's. Lyrics that I couldn't discern before can be clearly heard. Bass is easily followed when before it was overshadowed by other players when music got busy. The palpably of the resonance of the stand up bass has increased. A negative brought on was a hardness in higher frequencies that I alleviated by lowering the vta which I had previously raised a tick or two beyond neutral to hear what I could, which I thought was slight increase in detail. Now that I lowered the vta back to neutral it's sweeter with no loss in detail or above mentioned gains. Cost was around 30 bucks and so far has done far more for the sound then I dared hope. Hope this helped in some way. Btw my table is the space294 w/wave mech. and Grado ref. 1 |
For everyone's information Nottingham has a new US Distributor. Check out the website audioencountersolutions.com |
My goodness, The Wave Mechanic is double the price of what it is if you get it from the UK. This is quite bold.
For this kind of money, a bit more, I would get Walker. |
Boston Audio Mat-1 works great. And also Neuance shelf under the table is a big improvement.
Shakey |
Fourwnds, how easy was it to remove the feet? Were they glued? |
Inna, you are absolutely right. The cones do reflect some of the energy back into the Panzerholz, where it can be dissipated as heat, and not transmitted, however indirectly, into the platter bearing. That is why I suggest a shelf of Panzerholz, or slate, or even ordinary plywood.
You bring up an excellent point. I suspect that the reason some of the exotic turntables sound great in one installation and lousy in another is just this - the refusal to engineer some important aspect of turntable design. But, as we are discussing, the refusal to engineer a problem doesn't make it go away, and we are stuck with trying to get the best sound from a partially engineered system.
At least with NA the main thing remaining to engineer is the shelf, and that is easy, and cheap. |
Inna, the feet were easily pryed away with a little flat head, it appears to be just a basic adhesive on there. The feet are still plenty sticky if I want to put em back. |
There is a reason why Nottingham has a cult following, both here and in Europe. Especially Spacedeck because it is not very expensive by audiophile standards.
I am not really familiar with exotic turntables. You are probably right about why they may sound so good and so bad.
Neuance shelf? I'll check it out too, thank you. I have Boston Audio Mat-1.
I am not really in a hurry, I like tuning and fine tuning the system. These things take time and patience. |
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Without doing anything else yet I put one smaller Walker resonance control disc on the maplebblock next to the motor. The disc doesn't touch anything. This increased clarity, it was neither subtle nor profound and definitely worth it. I'll get another disc to put on the other side next to the motor. Could be too much, though I doubt it, I'll see.
What I like most about Spacedeck is that it is very alive not a sterile machine.
After adding the Walker disc I had a chance to get Purist Colossus ferox interconnect. It replaced Maximus. One step up, significant improvement. And the Colossus is not yet fully burned in after Purist filled it with ferox. It has 120 hours on it, and Jim of Purist Audio says 200 hours. He is right, I can hear it. |
Inna,
I was a big Nott fan too. Until I heard the Well Tempered Amadeus.......
Shakey |
Shakeydeal, what did you find in Well Tempered that Spacedeck couldn't do ? |
Inna, I currently have a Symposium Audio Segue ISO shelf under my Ace Spacedeck. The manual states that sorbothane footers are a no-no with this particular shelf, so I bypassed them by placing the motor and table on shaft collars that I got off the internet. There is a review on PositiveFeedback.com of this product from earlier this year that uses a Spacedeck that details this. This is ultimately what sold me on the product as I was also looking at the SRA unit. My shaft collars are black, so you can't really even tell they're not stock. My experiences mirror that of the reviewer. The ISO shelf has done nothing but good things to my sound, more clarity and insight being the most apparent changes. I'm very happy with it. |
Tubehead, I've been eyeing the Segue ISO myself, for use with my Townshend Rock Elite table. But then there's also the Townshend Seismic Pod, which is also a spring isolator. Decisions, decisions! |
Tubehead21, thank you, you add Symposium as yet one more possibility. |
Inna, I recently came across some data which suggests that Rosewood is superior to Baltic birch plywood, and to slate, but still much inferior to Panzerholz. I still like the idea of veneering Rosewood onto Panzerholz. |
All depends on what you're trying to do. Baltic birch is valued for its stiffness, which in itself is quite a good isolation parameter. Other woods I suspect have varying degrees of anti vibration behavior and or stiffness and of course it depends a lot on the thickness of the wood. There are a lot of variables involved including beauty of the wood, no? If you want to go for the high density look get a hold of some iron wood. |
'depends on what you are trying to do' is an excellent point. I advocate the approach of tuning the system and controlling the resonant energy not eliminating it altogether. Hard to accomplish and requires a lot of experimenting, including trying different woods. I would start with woods used for making instruments, ironwood is not one of them. Brazilian rosewood, spruce, cocobolo etc. In the end it might come down to personal preference, and that's good. For example, I like the sound that is deep and a little on the loose side but not much. |
Actually, to be honest, the reason I mentioned ironwood or iron wood, whatever, is to suggest what I think is true, that many audiophiles believe that it's the density of the wood somehow that's responsible for the benefits to the sound. But that's actually not the case, by inspection, since it's actually relatively less dense woods that are used in the making of musical instruments AND in audio systems, woods like ebony, rosewood, spruce, maple and birch. |
"Shakeydeal, what did you find in Well Tempered that Spacedeck couldn't do ?"
Sorry, but I just saw this.
To be honest, as much as I loved the Spacedeck (owned two of them), the Amadeus just made it sound broken. No other way to describe it.
Shakey |
I wonder, if it would make the deck sound better, at least to me, if I put it on Brazilian rosewood block instead of maple. Ebony doesn't seem very appealing. Indian or Honduran rosewood might work too. Brazilian rosewood block of high quality would be difficult and expensive to get.
Ironwood is very 'stupid' wood, makes nice knife handles but even for that that's not what I prefer. African blackwood, which is not ebony, I have no idea of.
I think, Tom Fletcher should've experimented with plinths made of different woods. Maybe he did, but that's not what materialized. |
All of the woods you mention at least on terms of sonic results pale in comparison to real isolation techniques, and what I'm referring to here is mass on spring isoaltion. Of course, if you've made your mind up with respect to exotic woods you can have your cake and eat it too. You know by employing exotic hardwoods between the component and the uh springs. |
What springs? I didn't quite get it.
My mind is not set on anything, only on the need to experiment and listen. |
Mass-on-spring system is the default technical method of vibration isolation, isolation from footfall, seismic type vibration including traffic, subways and the like, even wind if one's abode is on one of the upper floors of a highrise. Mass-on-spring devices can range from the mid as to the sublime, from bicycle inner tubes to squash balls to Bungee cords to Vibraplane, Minus K and other more complex and pricier devices. It is with these very low frequency devices we discover the unadvisability of very low frequency vibration. |
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