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Improving a Tuner

chiily

chiily

PFM Special Builder
I'm thinking of buying either a Creek CAS3040 or NAD 4225 tuner from ebay, (don't you all go bidding for them now...)

I was wondering whether anyone had done any mods to either, or whether one was easier to work on than the other. I'm looking at updating PSUs first.

Any knowledge or general help most welcome.
 
I don't have any experience with the insides of either of the tuners you mention, but I've played with both my NAD402 and my Denon TU260II and both responded well, but the NAD is far better.

This may be simply due to a better raw PSU in the NAD - the transformer buzzed from new, but I simply replaced it with a nice toroid as I didn't want to be without it.

The NAD has a very open, punchy sound and a total absence of that mid-range edge that most tuners have. This is the problem with the Denon, there's an edge to the sound I've yet to eliminate, I need to get the service manual and dig deeper, but it could simply be a chipset issue.

The NAD is optimised for low distortion, and has a complex set-up procedure, the Denon on the other hand is no-tune and may be limited because of this.

I reckon both could be good, but there may be more room inside the NAD, the Creek is a small unit, IIRC.

Andy.
 
Markus,

I had seen that thread before, but I didn't remember it whilst digging around for a tuner...I've gone and bought a NAD 4225. (However, the other half is quite happy with me spending money on old hifi, keeps me out of trouble, as long as I buy her expensive birthday presents, like a £400 necklace...ouch!)

Thanks for pointing the thread out to me though.

I'm awaiting delivery of the NAD, a week of listening, a week of probing with the old multimeter and a week of figuring out and building a PSU.

I'm sure I remember something about the led illumination on NADs going up the creek (bad pun) and replcing them with LEDs (white). I'm darned if I can find the thread though...

Garf.
 
Cheers for that link. I knew I had read it somewhere.

The NAD's here and my antenna (aerial) is, well, crap! 'Cos it's a bit of wet string.

The display works fine though :)

I know an indoor antenna is pretty useless and my better half has said, and I quote, 'spend what you like to get it sounding good...'.

Now there's speechless and there's shocked, I was shocked.

So for a decent outdoor antenna (just to keep the NAD happy), how much should I pay?
 
Saw a post on the Naim forum that Ron Smith's back in business - if you're going to the effort of clambering around on the roof (or paying someone to do it - highly recommended), then a few quid more on a decent aerial is worthwhile.
A Galaxie 17 is quoted as being around £100. Some say that a reasonable tuner with good aerial will beat a NAT01 or whatever with a mediocre aerial.
 
Hi,

I am using a NAD 403 in a second system and use a cheap and cheerful indoor bipole arial.

I bought one of those "kits" ie two metal tubes, a couple of bits of plastic and some coax.

Put it together and subsequently replaced the coax with some low loss satelite stuff I had lying about. The arial resides under the setee and pulls in a very respectible sygnal to my ears which have to strain hard to hear any interference on stuff like Radio 2 and 3.

Cost was about a tenner.

Regards
 
I had one of those DIY dipoles in my loft and it seemed to work OK on my Marantz ST48. Then I had my roof re-slated and thought it would be a good idea to put in a new 4 element roof dipole whilst the work was being done.

The difference was noticeable, a definite drop in the noise floor and generally improved results. I'm in a fairly strong signal area, but the better the antenna the better the sound.
 
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