Calling All Fraim Brains/Brawn Stacks Aficionados!

Has anyone tried an ND555 on the Fraim base, below the 500? It would allow a space higher up while keeping both the DIN/XLRs off the deck, either below the 552 or the superline. Currently my base has two recycled Lite shelves as there’s nothing on it so a Fraim rebuild would be necessary and that would mean disturbing my turntable.

When the inevitable happens and the 500 and its glass shelf slide, and a Fraim ball goes rolling off, the advice I got here was spot on. Slip a few glossy magazines under the front of the glass (between glass and Fraim) and that’ll let you lift the glass and slide it so that you can re-place the ball.

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A-Men Brother!

I don’t do much of the stuff referred to in this thread at all - I do try and keep things on the brain and brawn side, but it’s not completely possible, so I use the ND555 as a “shield” in there - and I do keep the SuperLumina hanging free and away from things, but my speaker cables touch the floor as do my Burndys (which might even touch the wall too) …I’m cool with it. Forgive me father, for I have sinned :joy:

If somebody tells me it makes 10% difference, then I might spend a bit of time on it, but it feels really edgy to me… 1% - well - It’d need to be a very boring weekend indeed!

So from the top down that’s 552….ND555….555PS….555PS….500

….the other side has the 500PS and the 552PS, and room for something else. Sometime.

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Whyis it considered wrong to have two head units side by side? Say a 552 to the left top and the 500 hu to the right top, with psu gapped to a shelf below.

I don’t know the pros and cons of mixing full fat Fraim with Fraimlite.

Maybe ask your dealer or enquire with Naim Customer Service.

I do it because I’m cheap like that and I already had the Lite shelves. I can see an argument where an unloaded Lite shelf can flap around where a full shelf can’t because that bit isn’t there but then I seem to remember @Darkebear fits the glass on his empty full Fraim shelves and they’ve got to be ringing along to the music, especially if oriented correctly. Then again you can hear the black boxes ring when you clap near them so maybe that’s not a problem but helps generate the illusion. Damping them is a mistake by all accounts. Which still leaves the question of unloaded Lite shelves.

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If I was going to have empty shelves in between I would just use Fraimlite. They use the exact same stanchions, bolts and spikes, and the shelves are the same material and finish, but larger since they cover the area included by the glass of a full Fraim. I use a Fraimlite on top of my brain stack where I site my turntable and it’s isolation platform.

Exactly, that was the context of my question, given you are using them mainly for the 3 load points and aren’t actually using the shelves at all.
I figured there’d be a few folks that had done it either by choice or just using what kit was at hand.
I also though about the top “cover” fraimlite as well rather than the top shelf electronics being exposed.

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It’s easy just get someone from the family to lift a cable up, or touch I against another, or touch it against a wall or floor, do this while you are playing a nice bit of music and if you can here a difference while this is being done, then you had better get behind your rack and get to work, if you don’t then just get it as good as you can and stop worrying.
My naim dealer certainly doesn’t worry about it all and he is trying to sell it lol

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Mixed Full Fat and Lite Fraim, here’s a picture of the resulting aesthetic nightmare, magic dust included.


Plus a vain attempt to diver the attention from the nest of power cables.

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It might work better in all black, except for the dust that is.

It looks fine to me. I just wonder if the ‘litened’ Fraim base performs the same as a Full Fat base.

So do I.

Wouldn’t fret too much, just enjoy the choons!

Maybe even better? It’s missing the glass, but the Fraimlite shelves have more surface area (more mass). :thinking:

Some day I might bite the bullet and order another medium shelf and 4 full Fraim shelves minus everything but the wood but it’s low priority.
It’s more likely than a second 555ps though.

The last thing I wanted from this thread was for others to start questioning their Fraim set-ups.

As I am moving to brains/brawn stacks for the first time I wanted to try and land on the best arrangement first off, and avoid faffing later.

Of course there is no single ‘best’ set up. All we can do is try to minimise the faffing and maximise the listening!

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I wonder what’s the lesser of the evils for 300/500 Burndies. Let them lie on the floor if that’s how it works out, or twist them up into a loop to get them off the floor (like I did with Morgana XLR in picture above). Any wisdom on that @Richard.Dane?

When I ran with a NAP500 I had the head unit and PS on separate stacks but low down and I could get it so the Burndy cables didn’t touch the floor. Admittedly you need a bit of space between the back of the Fraim and the wall, and having the Fraim too close may make this impossible to achieve.

You did that without twisting them? My 300 and 300PS are on the bottom levels of my Fraim and I don’t see how I could keep the Burndies off the floor, no matter how much space there is to the wall. At least not without twisting them upward into a loop.