My Homage to NAIM

I have been a NAIM fan for many many years now, and the reason has been performance and continuity (keeping a style and staying with it). So when I started working on a full restoring of one of my love music sources, I wanted to pay homage to the style and looks of my NAIM kit, and this is the result.

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Wow! I love the look.

That is beautiful- nice work :ok_hand::ok_hand:

I must be missing something, as I see only a (standard) Technics RS1500 tape deck from at least 30 years ago, which is a lovely thing in itself. But it’s not Naim in any way.

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I suspect it’s the black and silver livery. A homage to the Naim chrome bumper era.

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Cool looking Reel to Reel! Probably sounds fab!

Looks fab indeed!

There, just slight vertical distortion applied to emphasise the “reels”

Actually about the reels, the one on the left is 11" as opposed to the one on the right which is 10,5". I made a mod on the deck so that the 11 reels can be accommodated on both sides to cater for bigger tapes duration as in professional R2R.

A beautiful R2R indeed.

Was it, then, silver with chrome originally?

Looks superb.
Pride of ownership must be strong with this one…

@Richard.Dane must be excited!

As explained to Richard, I do this works only out of passion for the technology and the sound characteristics. This comes before vinyl in the repro chain, and if the source is a true master, you discover nuances that were never heard before.

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It looks lovely. Well done Salvo on a great job. I bet it sounds great too!

Nice looking bits of kit but i don’t think they sound as good as they look, as when you dig into the world of reel to reel they dont score very highly on sound quality compared to others, shame really as i think they certainly look the part compared to others.

Surely the biggest problem is that you can’t buy, say, the latest Beatles or Led Zep remastering on an open reel tape.

If you get one, I invite you to record a tape from a CD or other source. Even with that, the turning reels with set you in a mesmerizing mood :wink:

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No, but if you’re lucky you could find an original 7 1/2 ips reel release - many of these were 1-1 dubs at normal speed. The best ones can sound amazing.

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