Well here we go again,
Another pair,
A lot worse state than the last.
Looks like a re cone job to me,
That metal wire sticking out does not right to me
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They look like stripped black ash Mk1s. Will you be returning them to black or keeping them stripped?
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Yes they have been stripped,
Gonna give the wood a clean and polish see what they look like,
Not sure as yet,
Or what to do with the drivers?
Re cone or replace with mk2’s
I’m sure I’ll be told shortly 
Gonna be a long term project I think,
Or might just start a naim speaker second hand parts business,
Who knows what’s down the line?
What would you do if they were yours?
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If I were going to do a lot of diy to sbls, I’d be tempted to create an amplifier module either for under the speaker, or on the back of the loudspeaker.
Is that how sbls look when the black ash veneer is removed?
Yes, apparently so,
Who ever did it,
Did a good job pretty even all over
Gonna clean and polish 1 box then compare the 2
But I’m liking the contrast
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.
Really great speaker. I had a pair back in the day.
Richard
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The glory days of Naim speakers. Very much ‘of their time’ and very sad that the world has moved on and left great designs like this consigned to the past. These were speakers for people who loved music - not hi-fi.
We’ve had the Nait 50. How about special limited editions of the IBL, SBL and DBL? I’m sure they would sell like hot cakes. There’s nothing in the modern hi-fi world that’s anything like them.
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Sadly not possible as Naim had to dispose of all its speaker and drive unit making jigs and equipment in order to make space in the factory for Uniti and then Statement production. The old speaker dept. is now half taken up with the Statement area, and the rest is where production and test jigs are made and tested and also a special EMD testing room, which is like giant walk in safe room.
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I didn’t really think it would be, but it’s a nice thought. There’s a guy who builds brand new replica (supposedly) Isobariks for daft money. Maybe it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that someone might do that one day with Naim speakers, if Naim sanctioned it that is.
One must move with the times, but for those of us who loved what they did it’s hard to accept that we’ll never see the likes of those speakers again. 
Why did Naim stop making speakers, was it because financially they were not viable products?
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Believe that was the case - @Richard.Dane - ??
And - the factory space to build them was needed, for other things.
A bit… Marmite-y…
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Richard will know the precise reasons. I don’t think they sold particularly well at the time, and certainly always fared badly in group test reviews in the mags at the time. They were very much a marmite niche speaker. But if you liked what they did, which was different from anything else, then you simply had to have them.
I love my current Klipsch Forte III speakers and although they don’t sound like Naim speakers they are very much in the same spirit. ie. they are music speakers not hi-fi speakers.
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I’ve heard Allae multiple times. It took me quite some time to get used to them, as they were very dry. I think Naim loudspeakers work best in a full Naim system, otherwise they might sound a bit too dry, which I wouldn’t be surprised caused them to not stand out in group tests.
Still, in the end, they were very enjoyable and the design to have them up against walls would work very well in Ankit of people’s rooms!
There were a number of reasons;
The speakers never sold particularly well. They were uncompromising and demanded great dedication and care to the set up, being otherwise unforgiving. They were designed to work with the room and as such needed certain things like a solid floor and rear wall. They were not designed for stud walls or to be placed out in the room, which pretty much did for them in markets such as North America. The Ovators were designed to address some of these issues, but it didn’t seem to make much difference sales-wise.
With the merger of Naim with Focal, there didn’t seem like there was much room for Naim speakers. Better for Naim to concentrate on what they did best (electronics) and for Focal to concentrate likewise on what they did best (speakers).
Space at the factory had long been a critical issue. Even when I was there, Paul had been tentatively exploring the possibility of moving speaker production to a new site in Salisbury. It would free up much needed space in the existing factory, while laying the foundation for further expansion on a new site, with the eventual possibility of moving the entire factory there in due course. I guess that the merger and the cessation of Naim speaker production put pay to such ideas, at least for the time being.
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Indeed yes. They very much shared this with the classic Linn speakers of the time. I suspect that this at least partly accounts for their relative unpopularity. Many people probably just didn’t realise that everything had to be ‘just so’ and so they experienced them under sub-optimal conditions. Get anything wrong and they didn’t sound good at all. The magic evaporated.
They were equally demanding of the listener in many ways, and critical of source material. Their saving grace was that they had an almost unique way of taking the listener straight to the heart of the music. They cut through all the cr*p to deliver the musical message loud and clear in a way that almost nothing else did, even today. The music was all - everything else took a back seat.
They obviously weren’t everyone’s cup of tea. But if you ‘got’ them then they were highly addictive and really nothing else would do. Many of us still feel like that today.
I tarted a pair up recently and 3D printed some grills as I just did not like the look of the after market sponges available now, they just dont sit right. Delighted with the outcome.
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Could you explain more on this module
Please?
Imagine e.g. a Hypex Plate Amplifier on the back of a SBL. It’s an active amplifier and crossover in one device so my Atom HE could feed them using a balanced connection. One channel of the plate amplifier drives the tweeter, the other the mid/wooder.
Just seen the prices, I think I’ll give it a miss, but good idea though,
Thanks