Naim Nait 1

This is the pix of my Naim Nait with a green LED. It is part of the infamous "Chrome Bumper" series.

Bought the unit for my pair of Quad ESL Pro63. Many found the Naim to pair well with the ESL, including myself.

Although it has a lowly rated output of 15W RMS per channel, do not be fooled by the numbers. It has spades of power and is very apparently when used to drive easier loads like my pair of Meridian A500's.

Runs cool even when I use it for 12hours in a day (over weekends). Have not had the need to turn the volume dial past 9  o'clock ... yet.

Original

PRAT was great but I did note a "off-tune" treble reproduction on a section of a track of Emi Fujita's Camomile CD. Not much bass. Mid-range and high's were fluid.

Hence I took the opportunity to recap the unit, using silver mica(s), OSCON, Philips BC, Wima, Panasonic FC (for replacement of 10uf capacitors) and EPCOS. For the silver mica's used in the pre-amp section, I reduced the value to 390pf from the original 470pf. Otherwise the reproduction was overly bassey.

In addition, I reset the bias so the values of both channels are equal. I chose a lower value of 3.5mV. Added a "heatsink" (of sorts) to the transistors to enable extra cooling eventhough the Nait does really require it.

After recap

Once recap, the Nait has sounds more analogue with more detail in the mid and highs while retaining the PRAT. My good friend who heard it though it was a tube based unit!

I did note that the Nait was rather picky on electrolytic caps used in the pre-amp section. When I earlier use a different brand of EC for them, the unit ran much warmer than usual. Hence please be aware of this possibility if you decide to recap your unit.

Original components from the Nait