Does your dealer do minor repairs?

I know I can just call them mine, but I was wondering if all repairs have to go to Naim HQ.
There has been some discussion about new screens on NDS, but that, I can see, may be more than just a simple swap out.
But, if I had a dim Naim “logo” on the front of a Hicap, can a dealer swap that out, or does this now become a repair and attract a repair cost?

I believe your example can be done by a Naim dealer

Turns out they don’t. Has to go to naim. I was hoping for a simple solution. Bring in, go for coffee, come back an hour later and pick up.
Instead, bring in with its box, ship to Salisbury, wait a week or so, ship back etc.

In Italy, there’s an official naim assitance .
They changed the screen and the Naim “logo” of my UNITI first gen.
I think They do avery type of repair.

The dim/bleeding logo is apparently repaired free for life (a bit like the brittle plastic bits on the Hiline).
So while not dead simple, it’s the next best thing. You just need to pay for postage each way (for Naim’s heaviest ever phono stage).

Mine has done simple repairs……i had my nd555 screen readjusted. I had the choice of Andy at Signals doing it, or send it back. Likewise a small solder repair on my PMC crossover was done by Andy. He is very capable, but probably would not want to spend hours doing a repair that Naim should do.

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Andy is very useful … I remember him fashioning a funnel to pour Atabites into my SolidSteel sands… it was all easier said than done…… also very handy at setting up turntables and soldering and basic repairs.

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Really? Those nice folks in Pompey replaced my nDAC logo; nice job, but still a hundred quid. :laughing:

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Are you referring to Lasa in Piacenza?

I was happy(ish) to pay my dealer for this simple repair. But a call into naim, and they tell him these repairs are free for life.

Yes.

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Chris Murphy, (the Naim distributor in 2016), swapped my Naim Logo/mute switch on my NAC-N 172 in 5 minutes. Out of warranty. No charge. It was also the mute button and was randomly going into mute, a known problem. Great service.

Slide open the case. Slide the logo assembly out. Unclip the edge connecter and do everything in reverse with the new logo. I assume the light bleed problem requires the same steps.
It would have been crazy to ship it back to Sailsbury to do this. Part probably costs $20-30. Happy client, (me!), who had invested North of $20k AUD on his little toy.

But…that was then. Now it is different. There’s a great local guy who knows Naim back to front…but as we have no official service agent he cant get parts from Naim.

So now its a $600 AUD exercise and three months to and frowing. The new distributor doesn’t have clue, hasn’t got a local service agent, and doesn’t want anything to do with any of the huge number of 5 decades of Naim owners. So Sailsbury. Or not.

I just bought a new NAC 202 from the old distributors Addicted To Audio to replace my 2011 NAC 202. It was cheaper than getting a recap. BTW a pretty big improvement too, I could AB the old and the new preamps.

Naim really shooting themselves in the foot.

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Yeah I asked my dealer in the UK (where I am not) about recapping and he basically said that unless you live in a smallish country with an official service agent or perhaps very close to the service agent in a large country, flogging it and starting again will be more cost effective. Of course that conversation was based on 2014 new gear prices. With the cost of international shipping gone utterly bananas and new gear out of reach (and less appealing), I expect maintaining the gear by doing something unsanctioned and never mentioning it in detail on the forum is the only affordable path forward. Probably true for most Naim owners in far flung parts of the globe.

My dealer always did repairs up to the scope permitted by Naim. More extensive on other brands.

Wonder what that list of repairs permitted by Naim looks like?

I can see why it may be a list that is quite small, requiring basic skills. I was a bit surprised that changing an illuminated logo was either not permitted or not undertaken by my dealer. It’s nice that it will be free, but less nice that I have to ship it to and from halfway across the country, incurring costs and having the item away.

I had the advantage that the old distributor here, Addicted to Audio is dumping the last of their stock at 1/2 price. So a sealed box 202 (2022 build) was $2700 AUD. I got $1300 for my unserviced 2011 202. I am planning to go with a NSC 222 or Linn Selekt in a couple of years so this was a simple cheap temporary upgrade.

Service of high end brands here in Perth has always been patchy. Naim have generally been better than most, but the reality is it’s hard to provide good remote servicing.

This can be driven by the lack of suitable service equipment. As you know with modern manufacturing even “hand built” high end audio utilizes very specific machinery, jigs, assembley processes and final testing/calibration. Replicating a lot of this outside of the mothership is not practical.

And all the DNA of the factory is not possible, or indeed commercially sensible to spread around. The myriad of inhouse “tweaks” and “secret sauce” innovations that swirl around at Naim are a huge part of what makes the product great. Customers recognise this and rightly want their equipment to remain intact and full of PAaT after repair.

But doggedly refusing to facilitate simple repairs is not helpful for clients in remote locations. It’s so inefficient and alienating.

I don’t know if it’s a matter of a lazy distributor here in Australia or policy imposed on Naim from above. I can’t imagine that it’s Naim’s preferred way of doing things as Salisbury has always seemed to be very practical. And given the realities of business it seems they still have their hearts in the right place.

But right now I am doing “unsanctioned” things to my system, as they’re really the only option I have if I want to stay with Naim. I hope things improve here distributor and service wise by the time I have the cash to make my next great leap forward. Because there is no way I would invest $30-40k in new Naim product given how its going now.

One thing about unsanctioned servicing is, if you know what you are doing, you can do a good job. And as long as you don’t irreversibly modify/ruin something, when conditions improve, you can get it fully restored and serviced by Naim and also bring the resale value back.

But if conditions never improve… well I’d rather have a working unit than a non working unit so there’s really no downside if you are in that position.

My position too. You have to be real, if your high tech xyz toy with microprocessors, DAC boards, specialist transports, etc goes down, well for most brands if it’s 10 years old, it becomes an expensive paperweight. Even if the manufacture wanted too, they probably won’t be able to source the exact and now unobtainium parts.

But if your’re needing new caps, a relay, a LED or something equally mundane, a good techie can sort your problem. You can fix a 50 year old NAP200 and I am sure you won’t be using any original parts. Sure you can argue about losing the “magic” but at least you have sound. And direct your techie to use quality parts.

A strength of older Naim amplification is you have great construction, well layed out circuits and not too many non-sustituteable parts. Which is why Naim themselves can still offer great service on legacy kit.

I have a 2017 NDX. If it goes wrong, it’s probably going to become a paperweight. My NAC 202 and NAP 200 should never suffer that fate.

Everything is a paperweight eventually. It’s only a matter of time. Some things can be repaired for only 2 years after end of production. Some 100 years. But eventually you run out of road.

I repair a lot of fiddly electronics with surface mount parts. The older they get, the harder it is to get replacements bits. Often I have to buy 5 clone parts from China and see which one came out best before fitting it on an ancient PCB. Other times I have to research other products that used the same part and buy a knackered one online and hope that part I want it for is okay. A few computers are getting on for 50 years now and recently recapped and various trim pots replaced so I’m confident they’ll go another 25 years at least after my restoration. But at that time, will there be parts available still? Who knows. I take it as a personal defeat when I can no longer bring something back to life.

Knackered AV amps are the most difficult by far.

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Well that’s it! You can be the unsanctioned legendary savour techie for the Antipodes. Japan is so convenient to WA too. Almost the same time zone. And no language barrier! Common currency. What could be better…

I suspected you might be good with soldering iron.

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