Naim Olive

I try to keep my gear in the same condition I’d like to buy it. And, expect to pay a premium for the right item.
I’ve certainly found that when selling a load of MF gear that there were people out there that appreciated the province of the item. It certainly helped achieve a good selling price!
I’d certainly not modify any of my Olive gear. Don’t think it needs it.
I have seen some awful " enhancements" on ebay.

3 Likes

Same, in reverse. I went BNC on my 42 & my Linn Ittok, back in 85. The Linn Phono’s were nasty plastic moulded things and went in the bin…

Continuing to have fun with “Project Olive” during today.

Just had a lovely moment playing White Stripes “seven nation army”. Cranked it up a bit and these Olive boxes made the Epos ES14’s really sing.

Drum and bass superb, lovely deep bass and just the right amount of attack on the guitar notes. Really enjoying these little beauties.

Remarkable sound from small boxes, and such a small footprint.

4 Likes

Project Olive

27 Likes

Just awesome

2 Likes

the stacking ?

@PerF
Stacking? No problem. It’s just a photo.
Look carefully to see : (a) no cables ; (b) not switched on, no fascia lights.

Hope that leaves everyone’s HiFi OCD at peace, this lovely holiday weekend.
It’s been a fabulous Easter weekend so far.

Just been listening to London Grammar “truth is a beautiful thing” on CD - Vinyl - Streaming…
Swapping between formats and 72 inputs and listening carefully to any subtle differences.
Still trying to work out how these little cuties work and sound, for best use. Having fun :wink:

BTW, really looking forward to getting my hands on the new London Grammar album, due out next few days. Also, lucky enough to have tickets for their shows in November :+1:

Happy Bank Holiday Monday everyone.
Hope everyone is listening to great music right now.
Best wishes
R

5 Likes

Trust you have ordered the yellow vinyl version?

I’ll repost this picture for those with stacking OCD!

10 Likes

Three Shades of Olive… :smile:

My Olive’s vary - but not as much as the middle one above. Wow…!!


My 72 lovely shade of pink with the flash :joy:

11 Likes

And they really are those colours too.
Just to help out partially with the OCD I have put a piece of A4 paper between each so that the feet don’t mark the case below!
I did have the 72 away from those oversized transformers, but I’m not sure I could hear a difference.

1 Like

Here’s an older picture of my olive Nait 2 from an ‘experimental setup’ with a Linn Frankentable (bought in parts and sold in parts). The Nait is an early olive from 1989 with H&F transformer and phonostage, serviced by Darran. Btw. the experiment was a shootout among Nait 2 and Obelisk 2, Obelisk 3X, Cyrus One and Cyrus Two/PSX. To make a long story short, compared to the Nait the Obelisks (serviced by Phil/Nytech) sound pleasing but like ‘Naim on Valium’. The Cyrus’ (serviced by ARS) are impressive but start to get on my nerves after a short time, I don’t understand how someone can use it to listen to music for years but tastes are different…

19 Likes

…and a second picture with a Rega, some years later. Anyway, the Exact cartridge and the Nait phonostage are not the very best match.

13 Likes

Here’s a picture from the early 90ies (SQ was much better than the quality of this scanned photo :wink: ): NAC72 / HiCap / NAP140 / NAT02. I can’t even remember which speakers I used back in these days, I think it was a Kan.

14 Likes

How do you rate the 72/hi/140 vs the Nait 2?

In my humble opinion the Nait 2 is the ‘most Naim’ you can get, it is the distillate of all the bigger Naim amps. However, the better is the enemy of the good. Compare the Nait 2 to a 72/HiCap/140 and you wont look back (more stage, more detail, more bass, more air, more power and more music). Just keep in mind that 72/HiCap/140 was 4 or 5 times of the Nait’s price back in their days.

9 Likes

April 16th according to Amazon. Just ordered the CD - thanks for the heads up :slight_smile:

1 Like

what’s the best pre Olive that have remote control and can be powerd by a NAP140, so without an HICAP or a NAPSC?

Probably a NAC102 unless you take your constraints absolutely to the letter, in which case a NAC52 walks it. However a NAC52 needs either a 52PS or a Supercap but neither a Hicap nor a NAPSC.

And a 102 is better than a 72?