An online Naim retailer is selling a couple of open box never used Nait 50’s at £700 off retail if anyone is interested
I nearly bought but I can’t justify it … but it was very tempting
Not sure I can name the retailer but a google search should find them …
LED once more: because RS costumer service told me that they can only ship in the UK, I ordered various white and green LED lenses from different manufacturers (all 5mm diameter) from Mouser Electronics. They are cheap and were delivered in a few days. However, shipping (from Texas/US to Switzerland) costs 20 euros. I achieved the best result with a combination of 2 green and 2 white lenses.
After a successful home demo, I’ve decided to make it permanent! Just about to unbox this wonderful amplifier:
Did you come to any conclusion about your problem with the Nait 50?
Hi all,
…just a little design background about the muting/unmuting and soft-start.
Nait 50 on/off
Plugging in the Nait 50 to the mains you may hear a small click/pop as the control circuits take hold.
Once plugged in, it will go directly into 0.5W standby. Only the small SMPSU is on (under the black cover at the back). This powers the logic circuits; no microprocessors in the Nait 50). The audio circuits are completely off.
Pressing the ‘mains’ front panel button will toggle between standby (0.5W mode) and listening mode. The front LED will be brighter in listening mode. The button is called ‘mains’ to be like the original Nait, but is in fact a standby button.
Going in and out of standby by pressing the ‘mains’ button is very quiet (or auto standby). There is a 4 stage power down/power up sequence to take care of proceedings. FYI it is the same mute strategy in the new classic power amps.
Soft-start
Soft-start is how the mains toroidal power transformer starts up (the large round object). At power up a special resistor called an NTC soaks up the mains inrush current as the transformer magnetises. This prevents stressing the mains fuse and for bigger amplifiers stops RCD circuit breakers from inadvertently tripping. This is separate from the power amp section 4 stage mute. Once the toroidal has magnetised the NTC and the 0.5W SMPSU are switched off the N50 is ready to play.
Cheers
Steve
Just treated myself to a ‘matching’ CD transport for the 50. A TEAC PD-505T.
Untried. However, looks to do everything I want and TEAC have a Christmas discount of 15% on their site, so went for it!
Do you have a dac to go with it?
Yes, I use a Rega Dac-R
Nice, should match really well.
TEAC seem to be on a roll with CD design at the moment
Perhaps because they gauged the market right… I was reading last week that demand for CDPs is on the up, with a new generation of music lovers who no doubt enjoy Spotify but want to own physicals for music they enjoy that also sounds better.
What goes around comes around… 
Probably something to do with being able to buy CDs for about a pound a pop from charity shops, Music Magpie and the like. And without the QC issues associated with most sh vinyl purchases these days at money which is frankly bananas!
Our charity shop is 50p a cd, or 3 for a £1, we try to make sure we have cash to give extra for their charity box.
Kudos to the Oxfam I frequent, I asked if they could invest in some easier to remove price stickers last time I was in. Yesterday I saw they’d done just that!
There is a review of the Nait 50 on the What Hi-fi website. They don’t give star ratings for limited edition products but found it to be “a hugely entertaining and musical amp” although they do note the importance of matching the Nait 50 to speakers with care in order to get complimentary sonic characters.
The review includes a photo of the What Hi-fi review of the original Nait from 1984. Unfortunately the photo does not have sufficient resolution for the review to be read.
Yeah, but they rarely have any titles worth buying… but used CDs for interesting and modern titles can be found online unless your charity shop has a good source. I find Amazon a good source for good used CDs… as well as new titles.
I also note some CDs that are out of print are starting to go for silly money… one of mine is fetching around £300 when I last looked…… admittedly I bought it secondhand several years back for around £70.
Interesting… the Nait50 will drive many speakers well, however to hear the subtleties of the Nait50 you need to have a speaker than can render those, especially in the mids and higher end… and that is where the matching is important, or you might as well use a lesser amp.
Ooh, what was that?
It was the original immediately pulled and deleted version of Sandy Denny BBC Sessions… only a relative small number (3500) got out into the wild on the day of launch before it was pulled.
The album was later incorporated into a subsequent release… the recording of the Northstar Grassman and the Ravens is particularly impressive… it’s one of those artist audience recordings where you can feel the atmosphere… kind of like the Johnny Cash Folsom Prison recordings.
