Nottingham Analogue Space Arm Wiring

J

jimmielx

New Member
Hello, my first post on this forum!

I have recently acquired a Nottingham Analogue Spacedeck with what I think is a SpaceArm. I purchased it secondhand and don't have much information about it. I think it is an early model - as the platter only has one damping ring. Here is a picture of the deck.

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Worth saying that I am really pleased with it. It replaces a Rega RP1, which I had for a number of years, so quite an upgrade. I was told it had a new motor and belt, and I also got the protractor and some bearing oil. The foam mat I think is correct and I do believe I read somewhere that the original dust covers were just plain black acrylic as I have here. I acquired it for £800, but sold the cartridge which came with it, so in effect it cost £700 for the deck and arm, which I think has got me a lovely deck and arm.

The arm wiring had no labels on the tags, so I had to meter those out and I could also see some kinks in the wires going into the arm. In addition I could see that the wires seemed to be incorrectly routed between the arm and base - appearing to have to wrap around the the metal rod joining the arm and base from front to back rather than just dropping straight down behind. I also noticed a crackle or popping sound (like static I suppose) through the speaker when touching or moving the arm. My suspicion therefore is that the arm I have has at some point been rewired, and perhaps not very well.

So yesterday I decided to have a go at rewiring the arm internally with cable rescued from some apple earbuds - a tip I read on here. It's working fine, but I continue to experience the crackle when touching the arm. Inside the arm was the cotton wool like material at the head of the arm. I was expecting to find another couple of pieces of the 'cotton wool' further down to keep the wires away from the arm tube, but instead found (an reinstalled) a piece of copper? (at least full conductive) mat, around 120mm x 40mm x 3mm deep, wrapped around the cables at the pivot end of the arm tube. I wasn't expecting this, but did reinstall it. I now wonder if this might be causing the crackle? Shouldn't the cables be held away from the walls of the arm internally by something non-conductive? Does anyone know what should be inside the arm?

There seems to be remarkably little information about the Nottingham Decks out there. But I have read several posts by @Fishead here, and would be very grateful for any more information that could be shared to help me along with the turntable. Being in the UK, I'm sure I could send the arm to NA to be serviced and rewired, but keen to see if I can sort it myself. I'm quite happy with soldering and fiddly work - also a bit of a model maker and I studied Electronic Engineering at university a long time ago...

Here are some photos of the rewiring as it is at present.
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Thanks for reading this far and in advance for any advice.

James
 
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Hi there @jimmielx and a fine welcome to you sir to the AK community! Good job so far on your remake of that fine old table and I'm thinking you have it pretty well resolved aside from the tonearm wiring perhaps. First, I do not know that arm except that it is indeed an older model and there will be very sparse information on it as you are finding. You might call Nottingham and ask Penny, if she's still there and answering the phone, who your best resource might be in terms of a dealer near where you are located. NAS is VERY difficult to engage beyond providing dealer information and this is, I presume, to protect the dealer network putting the customer at a distinct disadvantage but I suppose that's reasonable if one is a dealer. I live in New Mexico and the only US distributor is in Florida!!!

You've chosen well with regard to cannibalizing those Apple earbuds for the copper Litz wiring! I did that and found it to sound equal to the silver Litz.....or let's say that my ears could not tell any difference and since the silver had become too short to use, it was a moot point other than sending it in for a rewiring to Florida which, about 3 years ago, they quoted me $250 for the job.

However, back to your job at hand. There is only cotton stuffed into my tonearm tube, presumably to provide cushion at those points where the wiring is most likely to interface with the ends of the tube. Since the Litz wiring is individually coated with something, a shellac or varnish if I recall, unless it were to have a break in it there is really no conceivable way that it might be causing any static. What I did, just to be on the cautious side of things, was to make a ball of some cotton, poke a hole through the center, and using some tweezers pulled the wires through. Then, I took some plastic tubing, such as is used for aquarium pumps, anything really that will fit snugly but not too tight inside the arm tube, and gently pushed this ball all the way to the end of the tube whilst holding the wires steady until I could see it begin to exit at the end where the tube enters the pivot cavity. Stop there and take another ball, do the same thing and stop 3/4 of the way to the end (by measuring the length your tubing has traveled into the arm tube) and retract the tubing. Take another ball and go 1/2 of the way, then another going 1/4 of the way and finally the last ball that will rest right at the orifice of the tube at the headshell. Now, upon giving the wiring a very slight snugging up by pulling both ends simultaneously, holding the headshell ends to the precise length you want them to be and allowing the excess to be pulled down into the armbase, you will have the wiring about as well-positioned from headshell to armbase as possible. At least, this is what I did and it has worked quite well.

The newer arms have slightly different configurations from what I can tell and might be better in some ways, but your arm should work just fine. The whole thing is a bit, as you say, fiddly.....there is no substitute for hands-on working with it and you will, over time, learn what you need to know to become quite proficient with things.

About that copper thing in the tonearm tube......this I would defer to others or perhaps even as I mentioned a call to NAS (who will again refer you to a dealer) for more information.....I have no such thing in either of my newer Spacearms (9" and 10") so it must have been a discontinued feature if it was ever a stock item to begin with. It would, however, appear from your fine pictures that you have the wires exiting the bottom of the arm from the area of the pivot cavity correctly.

I am not aware of any post that would require the "twisting" of the wires around and would, offhand, think this to be a detriment as the wires should not in any way bind the movement of the tonearm......hence, they should exit after passing through the last of those cotton balls into the pivot area and then, past the pivot post (this is something I recall took a little time and persuasion to get just right becuase you don't want them to interfere with the pivot post or point in any way so you have to work around the stabilizer bars carefully to get them in just the right position) down into the base. Once in the base they should extend down to where the ends of the RCA wires come up, soldered to them matching channels, positive and negative, insulated from one another (I used the liquid electrical tape as I recall for this part of the job), and then there is a clear soft plastic yoke that will slide over the entire assembly to shield it before the hard, black rubber plug with the slit in it is positioned over the end in such a way as to allow for the grub screw that holds it all in place is tightened on to that plug. There is a slit, or channel, that you will position the ground wire into on that plug. Position the plug in such a way that the grub screw makes contact with it so that the ground is firmly established. I'm suspecting that if your ground wire is not positioned properly as I have described, that the "static" you are hearing might actually your hand touching the table acting as the grounding point which, as you might suspect, is not desirable.

Well, that about covers it far as I can tell amigo. Let us know if there are further questions/concerns and by all means, let us know how you fare with this......others down the road might be very happy to know as well!!!
 
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PS - how quickly does the arm drop when you lower it? These things will, sooner or later, require some work to get to work right. Hint: it's a Rega product, the whole assembly, and it requires something called silicone oil to provide the resistance for the proper drop-rate.
 
Thank you both for the welcome!

@Fishead thank you very much for the detail of your experience. This is so helpful and very much appreciated. I am going to have another go at the tonearm wiring later in the week. I will try removing the copper mat and use the cotton as you suggest - that makes a lot of sense, as does the method. I will also have a look at the grounding point, I'm pretty sure I don't have the grub screw as you describe, and whilst I do have continuity from the ground wire to the arm, I'm not sure how good that connection is.

The arm drops beautifully slowly and smoothly when I lower the cueing lever. I haven't timed it, but plenty of time to get back to the sofa - certainly a lot slower than my previous Rega. That feels really good. What isn't so good is that sometimes the cueing lever doesn't hold the arm up - not always, it can hold it up overnight, but sometimes having raised the arm to change the record I find that the arm has dropped again. I haven't had a proper look at how the cueing lever works yet, but on removing the plastic cover underneath it I did notice what looked like a small amount of brass dust in the plastic cover, so I wonder if something is worn in there.
 
There's a cam in the piston and this can be worn, producing a notch of sorts so if you don't get the lever up properly, it will find its way past the cam and start to drop. This can have disastrous consequences with regard to the health of your cantilever so it's always a good idea to park the arm to the far right on the platform as it is intended. There, you can lower it, or it can lower itself, with no worries......any time you prepare to play a record, the first thing one typically does with this table is lift the arm up and slide it over to the beginning of the record on that platform but if, in the sliding motion, the arm decides to drop (which means the platform is dropping of course) then you're on a collision course between the cantilever and the edge of the record.....guess which piece will come out the loser????
 
I must say that coming from a Rega I was surprised that there wasn't some sort of mechanism to lock the tonearm in its parked position. That said I do also like the minimal design ethos. At the moment I am parking the arm to the right and also fitting the stylus guard. Part of my process of moving the arm into position is to check that the cueing lever is up, but it would be great to know that the lever stayed up of its own accord! Either way I will need to keep the stylus guard on as the deck is in the living room and I also have a reasonably well trained six year old - but a six year old nonetheless!
I currently have the Nagaoka MP-110 on the arm - brought across from my Rega RP1. I will keep this on until I have the tonearm wiring sorted, but I have got an MP-300 ready to go once I have everything sorted. Really looking forward to hearing that cart too.
 
I have made some progress with the tonearm!

I had been thinking about the niggle with the tonearm - a static kind of popping in both channels when I moved the arm. I wondered if the arm was properly grounded. The ground did meter out from the arm to the ground cable, but maybe not perfectly. So I ran a cable directly from the the ground on my phono stage to the bias bar on the side of the arm just to test the theory. Straight away the crackles when I touched the tonearm were gone and there seemed to be a small drop in the minimal background noise too. As far as I can tell the grounding is supposed to run from the base through the pivot to the body of the tonearm and in my case I suspect that the contact through the pivot is not clean. Whilst it would be good to take the pivot apart and clean it, I have read the advice not to touch the Allen screw on top of the tonearm, which would seem to be the way this comes apart. The pivot seems good to me, so I don't want to mess with it.

I found that I could solder a cable directly to the underside of the arm, adjacent to where the cartridge cables run, and connect this to the ground directly. Thus my arm is now directly grounded and dead silent when I touch it!

I also rewired it again, because I had reused the tags from my old wiring and wasn't happy with them and wanted to remove the copper mat from inside the tube and replace it with cotton wool. I sacrificed a second old pair of Apple Earbuds - this time I got lucky with red, green, blue and clear cables inside - a better set of colours. To liberate the cables from the plastic sheath I found the best method was to slice the the plastic sheath open or very nearly open, very carefully, along it's full length with a sharp scalpel. The cables inside are reasonably easily damaged, but with care can be successfully harvested.

Some photos for reference.

The arm with the new cable soldered in place. There is a gap at each end of the bar that the pivot runs along and I was able to apply a little solder and fix my earth point here. Any additional weight added to the arm is pretty much centred and the cable is running close to the existing cables, so I hope this will not affect the movement of the arm at all. It's interesting to see so quite imprecise engineering under here - the bars sit in overly long slots and are held in by punching the soft metal of the arm.
IMG_0834.jpeg

This is the copper mat that I previously described finding inside the arm tube. I have now removed it, but will keep it...IMG_0833.jpeg

.Replaced with three small pieces cotton wool. Easily installed with some plastic tube, as described by @Fishead
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Here are the new wires soldered to the RCA cables.
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And the arm installed back on the turntable.
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You can see the additional ground connection here...
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I want to say how grateful I am for the assistance given here - thanks again @Fishead ! I would have been significantly more reticent to tackle this without some knowledge in advance. Hopefully these pictures might be a useful resource for someone else in the future.

The turntable is sounding great, it's nice to have lost the noise when moving the arm and I'm sure the noise floor has been lowered too. My next mission is to install the Nagaoka MP-300 in place of the MP-110. To be honest the 110 is sounding really great to me, so I'm interested to see what improvement the 300 has to offer...
 
Such a fine job, @jimmielx! What still puzzles me is why it was necessary to attach that extra ground wire? It would appear that the ground wire from your phono stage should ground the arm assembly if the grub screw in the base connects to it by virtue of tightening it to secure the assembly in place, no? l believe aluminum, which the arm base largely consists of, is a good conductor, right? Still, life with no pops and crackles is good! Carry on, amigos.....
 
Thanks @Fishead ! I'm pretty sure I have a solid ground connection via the usual cable to the arm base and on into the steel rod coming out of the arm. My suspicion (which I haven't really been able test) is that I was getting an unreliable connection within the pivot itself - that seems the most likely. In any case, it's working well now so I'm going with it!

I have today installed the MP-300 in place of the MP-110 cartridge. I felt that it was already sounding great with the 110, so wasn't sure how much more to expect. Happy to report that straight away, without any of the bedding in time there is noticeably more detail in the music - it's such a pleasure to listen to!
IMG_0848.jpeg
 
Well done, @jimmielx! It's a bit of an art to get that grub screw into the "yoke" right at the place where it will make solid contact with the ground wire, that's why I was emphasizing it but your thoughts regarding losing ground at the pivot are certainly interesting. One would think that, since the pivot is further supported by the two stabilizer bars, one to which you have attached(soldered) your added ground wire, there should be continuity straight through the assembly but clearly this was not so in your case. It was a creative move on your part to run that extra wire up there, and since you now have eliminated the problem all is good......and especially since you've taken a step up with the MP-300!!!

Does your arm allow for azimuth adjustment? I'm not sure that those earlier arms did......both of my Spacearms allow for rotating the headshell in the end of the arm tube, although the earlier 9" one does not specifically say so in the owner's instructions, which as you know are "sparse" to a fault!!! Enjoy, amigo......carry on.

PS - do I see a shim between the cartridge and the headshell above?? It does appear so, although my other thought was some sort of an insulation pad?
 
Outstanding purchase on a top flight table, shows there are still deals out there.

I'm sure you've noticed even budget carts will be elevated to new heights, great to know your table won't be the weak link.

I've often said "a high end table will get more out of a budget cartridge than a high end cartridge will out of a budget table".

You've got a schveet setup there, congrats.
 
Thanks @Sgt Shultz

@Fishead Good question re azimuth adjustment...! Obviously when I was researching and then purchased the table and arm I googled and found - well not a lot. To be honest your posts on this forum provided some of the best information that I was able to find - a most helpful it has been! To that end I tried to see if the azimuth could be adjusted as you describe when I had the arm on the workbench. Mine really doesn't shift. As far as I can tell it is fixed. So maybe it is an 'earlier' arm that doesn't have any azimuth adjustment. Happily I don't believe that any is needed, it looks spot on to me - by eye and with the aid of one of those perspex alignment tools.

As to the actual date of my turntable and arm. I'm going to assume that they were supplied together - seems likely. I believe the turntable was introduced in the 90's - I found a reference to that somewhere but can't put my finger on it just now. There is a review online from 2005 which pictures a Spacedeck with two dampening rings on the platter as the current production model is shown with. Mine has only the one damening ring. So I assume it is 90's or early 2000's and the arm the same. Might not be of course, but that's my logic!

Well spotted - I have an Origin Live Cartridge Enabler fitted. I understand that it is an insulation pad. Now I must confess that I got it just before acquiring the turntable - didn't get around to fitting it to my previous Rega and put it straight on the Nottingham. So what does it do? I have no idea! This is not a good state of affairs and going forward I am going to be very much more methodical in my approach to any 'mods'. So I have switched cartridge - and noticed an immediate and thrilling upgrade - so far everything that I have put on has revealed more detail in each note - how it is played. Things are sounding more like music, even just listening in the background - that's pretty exciting! Anyway, once I've become used to what the new setup sounds like I am going to try removing the pad (dropping the VTA correspondingly) and listening again for a while.

What mat are you using? I see you have the heavy kit and the double dampening ring platter, so yours will have a much heavier platter, so not the same. But all the same I wondered if you have experimented with the mat? I believe I have an original foam mat - it looks like what is described, but I also read that it was intended originally to be used without the mat. Again, I shall get used to what I have before making any changes myself, but interested to hear what you have settled on!
 
I tend to think you are correct about azimuth not being adjustable with that arm. And yes, there really is very sparse information about these tables. I first used the supplied foam mat and it sounded very nice. Tom Fletcher had said the platter should be covered with that which is why he supplied it with the table. Then, I started to experiment and took the mat off altogether and listened in that way for several years. I then put a cork mat on it, one of those from Music Hall and have listened that way for several years now. I like how it sounds with the cork so I've stuck with it.....but now that you mention it, I think I'll do a little back and forth listening to make sure it's really the better of the three choices. What fun.....Here's a picture of what I'm talking about:

IMG_5640.jpg

IMG_5646.jpg

So nice that you're finding so much joy in this, amigo......carry on!
 
jimmielx said:
Thanks @Sgt Shultz

@Fishead Good question re azimuth adjustment...! Obviously when I was researching and then purchased the table and arm I googled and found - well not a lot. To be honest your posts on this forum provided some of the best information that I was able to find - a most helpful it has been! To that end I tried to see if the azimuth could be adjusted as you describe when I had the arm on the workbench. Mine really doesn't shift. As far as I can tell it is fixed. So maybe it is an 'earlier' arm that doesn't have any azimuth adjustment. Happily I don't believe that any is needed, it looks spot on to me - by eye and with the aid of one of those perspex alignment tools.

As to the actual date of my turntable and arm. I'm going to assume that they were supplied together - seems likely. I believe the turntable was introduced in the 90's - I found a reference to that somewhere but can't put my finger on it just now. There is a review online from 2005 which pictures a Spacedeck with two dampening rings on the platter as the current production model is shown with. Mine has only the one damening ring. So I assume it is 90's or early 2000's and the arm the same. Might not be of course, but that's my logic!

Well spotted - I have an Origin Live Cartridge Enabler fitted. I understand that it is an insulation pad. Now I must confess that I got it just before acquiring the turntable - didn't get around to fitting it to my previous Rega and put it straight on the Nottingham. So what does it do? I have no idea! This is not a good state of affairs and going forward I am going to be very much more methodical in my approach to any 'mods'. So I have switched cartridge - and noticed an immediate and thrilling upgrade - so far everything that I have put on has revealed more detail in each note - how it is played. Things are sounding more like music, even just listening in the background - that's pretty exciting! Anyway, once I've become used to what the new setup sounds like I am going to try removing the pad (dropping the VTA correspondingly) and listening again for a while.

What mat are you using? I see you have the heavy kit and the double dampening ring platter, so yours will have a much heavier platter, so not the same. But all the same I wondered if you have experimented with the mat? I believe I have an original foam mat - it looks like what is described, but I also read that it was intended originally to be used without the mat. Again, I shall get used to what I have before making any changes myself, but interested to hear what you have settled on!
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I bought my Spacedeck new in 2003. It has the thicker platter than yours with two damping rings. It's 1 3/8" without the mat. It also has the newer style Space arm than yours. I was looking at these tables for a couple of years before I bought this one and they all looked like this so I would imagine that yours is from an earlier generation, possibly in the 1990s.

I use a Boston Audio graphite mat which is a very noticeable improvement over the original foam mat and a few other types that I've tried. It's not a subtle difference and you can play a record with the original mat then change to the graphite mat and the difference is immediately obvious. Better bass, better definition and more clarity. Switch to another type of mat and it sounds like the foam mat again. I've demo'ed this to a number of skeptics and they all have noticed the positive change with the graphite mat in repeated switching.

One thing about the newer arms is the silver wiring. When I change cartridges, I make sure I have new pin clips available because the wire is so thin that it breaks easily.
Is your arm metal or carbon fibre? It looks like a different finish than mine or Fishead's.
Spacedeck.jpg
 
kyle said:
I bought my Spacedeck new in 2003. It has the thicker platter than yours with two damping rings. It's 1 3/8" without the mat. It also has the newer style Space arm than yours. I was looking at these tables for a couple of years before I bought this one and they all looked like this so I would imagine that yours is from an earlier generation, possibly in the 1990s.

I use a Boston Audio graphite mat which is a very noticeable improvement over the original foam mat and a few other types that I've tried. It's not a subtle difference and you can play a record with the original mat then change to the graphite mat and the difference is immediately obvious. Better bass, better definition and more clarity. Switch to another type of mat and it sounds like the foam mat again. I've demo'ed this to a number of skeptics and they all have noticed the positive change with the graphite mat in repeated switching.

One thing about the newer arms is the silver wiring. When I change cartridges, I make sure I have new pin clips available because the wire is so thin that it breaks easily.
Is your arm metal or carbon fibre? It looks like a different finish than mine or Fishead's.
View attachment 3163016
Click to expand...

I keep my soldering iron handy whenever changing carts on the Well Tempered Lab lol. Happily no mat to worry about.

For some reason I always think it's a good idea to do this at 2:00am.
 
cgallery said:
If anyone has pictures or links to the pivot system for these arms, I'd love to see how it works.
Click to expand...
The thing that has always amazed me is that it's a unipivot with no adjustment for side to side balance and yet it sits perfect level regardless of the cart I put on it. It has "stabilizer" bars to stop the arm from tipping too far over but mine have never contacted. Must be magic.
 
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