Moving away from Linn I’m relatively new to Naim and on this forum so I have loads of questions. I’ve always bought mostly new gear but very much into sourcing good used stuff from now on. Buying new loses a lot of value over a short space of time so buying something new to find you don’t get on with it is throwing away good money when you need to move it on.
However, I’ve noticed many people mentioning getting their hifi serviced. When buying used stuff with moving parts (decks, cd players) there is an obvious need to keep them serviced, but with stuff with no moving parts (amps, dacs, power supplies etc) why and when does it become necessary to have them serviced? What needs servicing on these boxes? What is there to go wrong? Depending on the class of the amp and how hard you drive it components may get hot and perhaps dry out capacitors but what else can degrade over time?
Mainly it’s the capacitors, depending on the box type other elements might have issues, e.g. rotary pots, but mainly it’s the caps. I had my 82 preamp (1993) Hicap (1990) 2*135s (1984) serviced at Class A a couple of years ago after a decade or so for the 135s and 20-30 years for the pre and PSU. Darran changed out a lot of caps, and replaced a couple of other items. He also upgraded the 82 to the superior later POTS8 pot, that was chargeable.
Sorry I can’t remember what the non-cap changes were, they were in the 82/NAPSC/Hicap, which I traded in when I went 52/Supercap, so I don’t have the service paperwork as that went with the kit. I’ve checked the paperwork I have and the 135s were caps only.
After that there was a fairly serious run-in period of a month or more, but it was a huge performance improvement immediately and just got better.
It’s actually the reverse of your quite logical theory. Naim recommend leaving a CD player alone until it becomes faulty, amps and power supplies on the other hand are full of very small high quality components that by nature degregate over time. For sure they could fit cheaper capacitors that would last many many years, but would have a greater operating and +/- tolerance, hence cumatively reducing the overall sound quality. The general rule is CB and olive series gear needs servicing roughly every 10 years, the newer ‘black box’ range is up to 15 years.
I have always purchased my kit pre loved due to financial circumstances but have the benefits of it already being ‘burned in’, and knowing that any losses on my outlay will be minimal
Buying high end kit new for me would only be worthwhile if I knew I was going to keep it for its lifetime. The quality of Naim gear, along with the factory/approved service, upgrade, and repair options means new vs used is virtually don to cosmetic condition
