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Naim CD player Trade-in Scheme

Darren said:
So they are going to all this time, effort and expenditure to obtain a stack of 15 year old (or more) CD drive mechanisms in order to keep a load of ancient CD players on the road for a while longer?
Bless you.
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Imagine if you had customers , who spent 5 figs on things like the CD555, and less than a decade later you have to say - sorry , it's scrap, because we do not have spares

(All these laser mech parts were dropped by Philips /over a decade ago; and the Naim -preferred DAC, the exceptional Burr-Browm PCM1704, K-grade, used in all the good stuff, inc the CD555 - had gone out of production in 2006!))

...such an exercise is cheap; and up-sells everyone else to 'New Naim' products.

Go figure. Naim have done sim before. I don't blame them for that: it is the art of good business.
And - I'm sure Naim would far-rather recover such unobtanium , from things they'd first done QC1 for acceptance -of, than any other shonky aftermarket sources.


(& No - I do not have any skin in this game/ not a Naimie.)
 
It's truly a shame that the Naim CD2: Electric Boogaloo was made so well that I'm still using it after buying a used one 25 years ago.

Joe
 
I think Martin has it exactly correct. It's a very specific list of eligible players. Naim want these players to harvest usable parts to service their customers' cd players and offload some streamers at the same time. There's nothing wrong with that except the BS marketing prose.

A good number of Naim and other cd players are still serviceable, just not by Naim, and non-original or cannibalized parts must be used. I can understand why Naim as a business doesn't want to do this. I don't hold it against any company if they can't fix a player that was last made 20 years ago and if certain parts have become obsolete.

If you are patient, a resourceful tech person can still fix many CD players. Although many lasers are Chinese clones which can be unreliable, at least they are available and it's better to fix a favorite player than to confine it to the dump heap. But of course there are certain players where the needed parts are truly unobtainable.
 
Sure naim want these back to pinch parts off them to fix others?
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
As the few parts they want, as in the transport area will probably already be not working correctly or have very limited life left in it.
I wouldn't want to pay good money for a fix that could go wrong again any day soon, and that would cause naim very bad press.
Probably just want to get them off the market, so they stop getting asked to fix something they can't, and then get bad press about it.
Plus they get a nice new sale out of it
 
Same here with my CDX. When it dies, I’ll probably go for a transport….something modest like a s/h dCS Verdi La Scala 😆

And TBF, Naim managed to resurrect my wife’s CD3.5 last November with a new laser.
 
colasblue said:
Perhaps I'll be able to trade in my "unfixable" SBL's for some new Focal speakers soon?

Focall chance of me going for that one!
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The youngest your speakers can be is 22 years old.... most car manufacturers no longer keep most parts for cars that old. WTF are you whinging about?
 
Joe P said:
It's truly a shame that the Naim CD2: Electric Boogaloo was made so well that I'm still using it after buying a used one 25 years ago.

Joe
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Please don't come on here telling us a 25 yo plus Naim player is still working, it does not suit the forum rhetoric!

PS CD2 is a fantastic player, had one for two decades and replaced it with a CDS3/XPS2, but that's all I could find to better it and it wasn't by much.
 
Mr Pig said:
So trade something that took twenty years to become obsolete for something that will be out of date next week?
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I can’t speak of the longevity of Naim’s current streamers but my two linn streamers are 17 and 10 years old respectively and both have the same level of functionality as a their current range, preamp functionality and WiFi connectivity aside (they use wired Ethernet), which is incidentally far more functionality than they had when new.

I do know a few other manufacturers have had dismal support for their streaming products, utterly immoral and borderline criminal… the first line of Cyrus streamers were so clunky and limited that they were irritating to use and not particularly useful… when they added more functionality via a firmware update, existing owners were offered the update for £400… and it was still a bit crap.
Naim have done better but still not great. Their first streaming products came four years later than the Linn streamers but can’t do Roon or Qobuz.
 
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Tiggers,

tiggers said:
Please don't come on here telling us a 25 yo plus Naim player is still working, it does not suit the forum rhetoric!

PS CD2 is a fantastic player, had one for two decades and replaced it with a CDS3/XPS2, but that's all I could find to better it and it wasn't by much.
Click to expand...

The CD2 was the perfect CD player for me. It sounds good and is obviously reliable. It was made in ~1995 and has been working faultlessly for almost three decades.

And since you can’t add a separate power supply or DAC it can’t be upgraded! Another bonus for me as I’m sure had those options been available…

Joe
 
I am in two minds. If the duff CDP is returned to Naim, there may be some recycling so I would even give it back for free. It may, however, be possible that some whizz kid one day will come up with repairing rather than scrapping them. Who knows.

I have a similar problem with my NAT01, it sounds beautiful but the green channel (wave) indicator is completely non existent. Do I scrap it or pack it away and wait for a replacement kit to be invented and use its shelf for a Naim streamer?

No one is immune to obsolescence.
 
Mick,

The correct answer for your tuner issue is to get a Revox.

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Joe
 
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