What happened was… before buying the SL on another forum, I spoke to my dealer about the cost, etc. [The dealer] gave me a price, etc. Then on Tuesday this week, after having received the SL on Monday, I contacted my dealer to get the SL booked in and to arrange dropping off the SL at the dealer. At this point, they checked the Naim dealer website and saw a note against SL servicing. So, they made a call to Naim to confirm.
Twenty minutes later, they called me back to say SL servicing was now history. That was when the tears started… plus a post in my original thread on this.
My SL left the factory may 2008 and has never been back. So my need for a service is well in line with naim’s service policy.
I can definitely see your point but I imagine that the contract and hence cost to make boards would need to be made ‘up-front’. Whether users would subsequently be willing to fork out a resulting heightened service cost would be an unknown. Perhaps the numbers just won’t add up??
All dealers were informed by email of this imminent change on Thursday 5th Sept.
Naim statement follows :
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Please note that due to their design, we cannot offer a service on the products listed below. The risk implications of damaging the internal boards are too high and given the value they hold, it is not worth damaging them beyond repair. We are still able to repair these products and will continue to support the owners.
CD555
NDS
SuperLine
Kindly also note that due to the obsolescence of parts, we can only offer repairs on the CD555 and CD5si. Unfortunately, we are unable to repair all other CD players.
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The change came into affect from Tuesday 10th Sept.
Mr Dane has since added additional information and context to this news.
To aid understanding. See above.
According to my phone, i called my dealer on …sept the 5th. Id argue that email is hardly proper comms. Where were the F2F discussions about EoL from the naim sales reps ?
Thank you for sharing these ideas. We are a broad church and it’s good for us to discuss and explore all these ideas.
However, my personal view is such comments are assumptive. Please forgive a more focused approach on my part, as we are affected by this news.
In a situation where individuals are personally affected - one way or another - some of us are searching for facts, truth and clarity.
FWIW, I’ve bought PCB’s in my long career. Small ones, large ones. Simple layouts, complex layouts. Smaller MOQ’s, larger MOQ’s.
So I would come back to two simple ideas.
Where there is a will, there is always a way ?
No price is prohibitive. All prices are elastic.
(There is only what a customer or customer group might reasonably pay).
Happy for the support !
As i noted further up, my timing is normally good, but not on this occasion !
My dealer did make a further call to naim this week ( they claim to be their oldest customer) but is was a hard no.
But, but, but, not much time from notification to a " no more servicing of SL"
Hey guys
Really understand the disappointment…
But!
Don’t want to disturb, but afaik all the listed products are still good for repair.
The service is an important milestone during lifecycle of our gear, but this ad on (what kept us all so long at naim) is unique and no others offer it in such dimensions. And now 3 products are off the service list.
When I bought my 52 (from 1995) there was no way for service here in DE - not at naim, not at a well known and respected service point. Reason: board with 2 layers - very difficult and likely chance for damage of pcb.
At the end my 52 get a fault (channel dead) and was repaired and serviced (I went down to my knees) at the service point. It was the very last time he did it.
I fully understand that if the chance of damage during sl service is too high and the costs for a complete new board are big - and now after eol - the boards are not widely in stock - service is not possible any more.
As far as I can see, there is no change in company virtues - all is explained well.
I think the strategy is fine as I don’t think there will be much more sale of brand new items, when the „few“ with older gear are unable to service. They would in this case hear till the end, buy other gear, or buy new naim gear - which they might have done anyway.
And with service you can also make some money!
Maybe I am taking it a bit more easy as with service it has been always harder outside uk.
Do you realize the huge margins that exist in this hobby? PCBs are not expensive, nor are most parts needed to stuff those boards. I’m very close to an owner of a car audio brand who manufactures some of the best car audio amplifiers available today. The cost of PCBs isn’t so great that they couldn’t pass along the cost to the customer in an effort to take care of them. No one has suggested Naim take a loss or act like a charity.
Are you going to take the same stance if they do the same to the extremely expensive ND555 just as they’ve done to the NDS? Do you think it’s acceptable that the one company who has been touting the need for a service to all their products for the past 30 years will just abandon customers because they lacked forward thinking on the product design?
This would be more acceptable from any other audio manufacturer on the planet, but when it comes from the one manufacturer that has made loads of cash from stressing the importance of having their products serviced every 10-15 years to keep them at peak performance it’s not going to be well received.
Naim design a product that can’t be ( easily) maintained, then tell us to service it every 12 to 15 years ( for good reason). Then, can’t deliver on their maintenance strategy.
Imagine buying a car then finding out it cant be maintained to prevent failure and restore factory performance. Then told they will only look at it if it has actually failed.
I would go so far as to say that Naim should indeed think about taking a loss on sorting out Superlines if it means maintaining the image and reputation of the brand.
No-one is suggesting that Naim should be servicing them for free and as you rightly say, PCBs and electrical components are not so expensive in the great scheme of things that we would be talking about a great deal of money, particularly in the context of what must be a very small number of items out there. That being so, even if there was a net cost to Naim per service undertaken, it may still be a hit worth taking.
I do not know if this metaphor works.
At a car service some items are only checked if they are ok - nothing is replaced in a prophylactic way. When something is out of spec (= broken) it will be repaired.
Naim service was never based on checking each item and only replacing the bad ones. This would be a financial Desaster …
What gets checked/ serviced in a car ( or anything else) is based on the components’ critically. If failure stops the " mission", then some form of inspection/service/overhaul is required to determin its fitness to perform during the next service period. Unimportant stuff is allowed to " run to failure". A risk based approach.
You also know what degrades and what just fails. Again the strategy is based on this. Plus cost.
How about giving all superline owners a chance to buy a spare board in case things go pear shaped during a service and do a run of boards based on the interest generated. I have not heard a better phono stage and never wanted to move on from mine. Now thinking about a Urika as many have said its a worthy alternative. Still a SL powered by a supercap DR has the best timing, slam and PRAT I have ever heard from an LP12. Very disappointed in naim over a product that I am (was?) proud to own.
Interesting points about design reviews there. We know Naim take listening tests very seriously, and I have no doubt that audio performance is a key driver for Naim, historically and currently. I don’t know how much formal systems engineering processes are used, if maintainability, reliability, supportability etc are formalised in any way. Certainly engineering for reuse seems to be a thing, with common streaming boards, and their preamp/headphone circuits.
I also recall points about the resistor ladder/relay based volume control made by Naim staff, and the reliability numbers for the relays chosen there. They definitely take lots of this stuff seriously, possibly trying more recently to reduce the need for maintenance and routine servicing without sacrificing audio performance?
The Superline was also designed years ago, we don’t know what the supportability situation, or requirements, was/were back then.
It’s all to easy to be an armchair critic here too (I’m definitely not suggesting you are, just using this post to make a few points, stimulated by yours, on systems engineering ), and from one or two posts from forum leaders/Naim staff, it seems the company isn’t happy about the situation either.
Also, I know this is a Naim supported, public forum, I think we are fortunate to have active factory involvement here, I wouldn’t want that to stop, regardless of the current unfortunate news.
All that said, I do hope there’s something that can be done here.
It is unlikely to fail, but it will degrade. Doubt it will sound as good as it did. Thing about degredation is that it is usually gradual. Lots of other things around us change- often our own hearing.
I doubt, nay will bet a months salary, that a newly serviced ( and suitably run in ) SL will sound better than a 12 -15 year old one.
), and from one or two posts from forum leaders/Naim staff, it seems the company isn’t happy about the situation either.