Looking for thoughts from Nottingham Analog table owners

bcowen- I am familiar with Pear Audio. I believe the Palmers also implement some of Mr. Fletchers designs in their tables. He must have been doing something right (-:  I do like the look of the Palmer and AW in particular. I think AW also does a bamboo plinth along with their Baltic Birch Ply. I wold say Pear seems to be getting the most exposure at this point, even more than Nottingham. Analogue Works is a relatively new company though.

*Disclaimer: I am a dealer for Pear Audio Analogue products.

The Pear Audio Blue Kid Thomas, Kid Punch and Kid Howard are the ONLY turntables that were actually designed by the late, great Tom Fletcher, other then the older Nottingham Audio models.

With all due respect to bcowan, the Pear Audio turntables and tonearms are quite different in construction, fit and finish than the old Nottingham products.  I have owned a few Nottingham models in the past and I will say that the Pear Audio turntables surpass the Notts in virtually every way.  For example, while the Pear Audio Cornet 2 tonearm resembles the old Space/Anna tonearms, it is quite improved in construction and sound.

I have taken Palmers in trade for Pear Audio models and I again must say that there is simply no comparison.  Palmer copied some of Tom Fletcher's ideas but ruined the benefits by uselessly elevating the platter and tonearm (remember kids, low center of gravity is your friend) and sitting the motor unit inside the plinth with minimal damping.  The first time I demo'd a Kid Thomas for a customer in his home, side by side with his Palmer, his wife (upstairs) yelled down to ask what he did to improve the sound.  It was THAT noticeable.

What are the associated components in your demo system at your dealership?

fjn04,

In the example described above, the demo was in the customer's home.  LFD phono stage, LFD integrated amp, Harbeth speakers (don't remember which model).

In my room I demo Pear Audio Blue turntables with a variety of components: Pear Audio tube phono stages, preamps and tube amps, Larsen speakers, GamuT amps and speakers, and EARO active horn speakers.

Been a while but I finally found a super deal on a Nottingham Spacedeck cw Spacearm and a nearly new Shelter 501 mk3 cart.
Setup was no harder than any other tt with the right tools so no worries there and there is zero noise, in fact its a very black background.
A little odd though was the fact that the arm was wired with xlr connectors at the end, my phono (Dynavector p75 mk3) does not support xlr so had to buy a pair of xlr-rca adapters.
The sound?
Heaven!
So much air and soul to the music even on less than stellar discs, somehow it manages to surpress the worst crackles and concentrate on the music.

I did a direct a/b to a digital file of a lp I was playing and it just sounded like a mp3 file even though it was a full wav file.
Don't get me wrong I love the convenience of digital but this reminds me why I do not mind getting up every 20 minutes or so to change the side!