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"Naim" clone phono stage?

Tony L

Tony L

Administrator
Anyone else spotted this curio Pure Class A single-ended LP Vinyl MC phono ref United Kingdom UK NAIM circuit on teh eBays? I'm curious as to what it thinks it is. It doesn't resemble any Naim phono stage I've ever seen being battery powered and having user adjustable loading & capacitance. I'm surprised they've gone as far as sticking the word 'NAIM' on the circuit board, though any plagiarism / potential copyright-violation aside it looks rather interesting!
 
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1981, Linnk, moving-coil phono pre-amplifier?

I used one for awhile when I had a Karma and Nait.
 
The meat of it looks like a direct clone of the Naim 323 board. Quite interesting.

As in the Pink Triangle Pink Linnk?
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No, way back when Naim manufactured a standalone MC phono stage for Linn known as the 'Linnk'.

Paul
 
Why ever would anybody buy that when they could construct a masterpiece such as this :D



Mine doesn't run on batteries though!
 
Is that a piece of Licorice root on the left hand side of that breadboard ?

Polystyrene Caps though.....
 
No it's a couple of bits of "D" shaped moulding stuck back to back and gives the correct offset when stuck to a corner brace to seat the board towards but not touching the base of the LP12 it goes in.

It works rather well!
 
Paul R said:
The meat of it looks like a direct clone of the Naim 323 board. Quite interesting.
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Agree with that. Could be worth buying one to play with - the only real point of note is the dubious choice of ceramic caps for the adjustable cart loading (up to 1000pF in that case size are going to be cheap'n'truly nasty, not COG / NPO which might prove fine). Then again, five quid's worth of styrene caps in a few values to suit your own cart would put this beyond contention.

Then again this supplier seems to specialise in dubious clones. There's a straight and rather unimaginative take on the classic JL Hood Class-A amp, original 1969 circuit, in a blingy case engraved 'Krell' ...wtf, as the kids say.
 
It looks like a straight rip off of the standard Naim phono stage to me. Be wary of the crap Chinese capacitors and possible fake semiconductors though!
Oh.. and all of Naims pre-amp and phono stages of this era are single ended class A. There's not really any other way of doing it with this type of relatively crude generic seventies circuitry.....
 
Naim built the Link back in the day when they were friends with Linn, it was for the Supex era of Linn carts, Troika, Karma; it's quite a rare little thing and looks nothing like the photo in the OP which seems to be made in China, not Salisbury.
 
Gaius said:
Naim built the Link back in the day when they were friends with Linn, it was for the Supex era of Linn carts, Troika, Karma; it's quite a rare little thing and looks nothing like the photo in the OP which seems to be made in China, not Salisbury.
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I think I've still got one... somewhere! Haven't seen it for years!
 
martin clark said:
The only real point of note is the dubious choice of ceramic caps for the adjustable cart loading (up to 1000pF in that case size are going to be cheap'n'truly nasty, not COG / NPO which might prove fine).
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Yes I noted these, also don't underestimate the effect cheap metal film resistors have on sound quality (As I have done in the past).

Naim's "Sound quality" is as much about the components choice as circuit design (which as is Arkless has mentioned is rather primitive).

Cheap Chinese components (Metal films) sound thin and bright... well Cheap!
 
Couldn't punters do something similar with a pair of 323s, a case and some batteries? I'm not tech savvy, so it's not a rhetorical question.
 
Yes they most certainly could, and even better they'd have some genuine Naim parts which would not lose any value.

I've got another one that doesn't run on batteries but could easily be made to, and it does use genuine Naim cards.

 
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