I’m getting a very good price on a NPX 300, thought of grabbing it as an second PSU for future upgrades however a little skeptical when I saw the serial number as these series are only used in the marketing material, are these serial numbers good to buy considering the quality of the parts used for build and service if required in future? @Richard.Dane appreciate your feedback please.
It’s most likely a review model., as well as possibly being used in a photo shoot.
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I would say that in theory they should be built to exactly the same standards as any other regular unit. If you have any questions about a particular unit then you’d be best advised to contact Naim with the serial number.
Back when I was at Naim we had special staff builds. These used B stock (Shirley called it “bish” stock) cosmetic parts, although you could make a special request to use perfect parts where bish ones weren’t available. The bits that mattered though inside were all production grade and units had to pass all the testing that regular production units underwent. For ages these staff builds didn’t get serial numbers, then they were numbered as per normal, then they moved to special numbering.
There were also pre-production and R&D units that had no serial numbers. Sometimes these differed slightly in some ways. For example, I had a pre-production NAP250.2 that had its case fixings in slightly different places to the production units so needed a custom extruded sleeve case. There were also R&D units built during regular production for developments such as ROHS that also didn’t get numbered. I would guess that these eventually found their way into staff use.
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Staff build was scrapped in 2018, so this unit is from the production line but with a serial denoting itself as non retail.
I’m pretty sure everything gets a serial number these days, even the units on an r&d desk in the middle of open heart surgery.
With the magazine etc review cycle finished, these units would be made available to retailers in the same way as graded units would be.
It will be 100% functional but its cosmetic state might not be perfect. If you have any doubt, speak to the dealer about its history, and condition - though its history is likely not catalogued and so the dealer could probably only say how it came to be in their possession.
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