Eye Candy...!!!

[jammy395]

Some fab stuff here......

http://www.audioclassic.org/vintage-hif ... world.html

[antonio66]

Living in the Past Jammy. You're not wrong though, some gorgeous hi fi there. More recently I have been looking at older amplifiers and think looks wise they really have something especially the silver and champagne fronted ones.

[Neilardo]

Eye candy indeed.
Love my NVA amps, they do every thing I want so I've no plans to swap them, but ...... Oh man if they had some of those big glowing VU meters on the front plate I might possibly love them just a teensy bit more.
Google images of sony TA-N77ES

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

This is the stuff mostly missing from our market due to the stupidity of our (UK) industry. First off from the early 70's onward the Japanese used importers / distributors and they were only interested in turnover and supplying the discount houses with *boxes*. Then from late 70's onward the Flat Earth took over and all this stuff was labelled Jap Crap. It is our own fault for allowing it to happen. So now if you want any of it second hand you have to get it from Japan, USA or Germany.

[_D_S_J_R_]

Some of it was good, but the rest all appearances - don't be fooled by lovely photography either and 'buy with your eyes.' The thing is, Naim genuinely offered something better and simpler in the mid 70's with their first bolt-up gear, before the bandwagon really started rolling - and at KJ, we had things like Luxman C1000/M4000, Accuphase, SAE, Phase Linear, early Bryston, Ampzilla, Dunlap Clark, BGW (Crown had sort of gone off the boil with their huge, over-complex and expensive two box amp), the Denon 850 integrated and big Yamaha C2/B2 (was there ever a C1/B1, I can't really remember as I was only a part timer then) as well as the best Technics charcoal coloured amps and tuners. A chap from Hampstead Hifi, who later came to work with us and then start Listening Rooms years later, brought in his Naim 12S/120 and this tacky looking pair annihilated all of them in musical terms - genuinely. This was before the awful (in hindsight) CB era product range was launched.

Some of my critics probably forget that the experience above is why I love NVA amps so much. The grainless and effortlessly easy way NVA amps have with the music fed through them is like an updated version of what Naim were doing back then before becoming piggy-backed onto Linn. the trouble is, with each successive generation of amps, fewer and fewer models seemed to keep this simple and easy approach, the sound becoming more and more processed and hard-forced as they went along, all in the pursuit of pr@t factor.

Oh yeah, we had the technics flash Reel to Reel on dem too. beautiful to watch, but a high speed Revox peed all over it in sound quality terms and that's why these, plus the pro 99 series, were used so much in studios worldwide, let alone the proper grown up Studer models.....

[alfafan123]

In the 1970s I also worked part time at KJ while studying at Uni. I had a great time and made some great friends. IMHO not all Jap stuff was crap. I remember fondly the Nakamichi 600 "ski slope" cassette deck which I thought rather fine (the Yamaha TC800GL me too one wasn't bad either) and it sounded even finer with the Dolby NR switched off with some decent tape. But it can't sound good I was told as the frequency response only extended to 18KHz with a following wind and on a good day..but to me it did sound fine and after the damage I had done my hearing at various prog rock gigs I doubt I could hear much above 15Khz anyway! Indeed to this day some of the best sound I have heard either came from a master tape on a Revox B77 at 15IPS or a Nakamichi machine.

I think DSJR is right I liked the Naim Nait Mk1 for its simplicity and packaging but I reckon Naim lost the plot thereafter as the flat earther's took control and life became much less varied and interesting after If you hadn't got an LP12 and Naim amp you weren't hip! .....and I am ashamed to say I fell for the LP12 hype till I had one and realised it sounded at best muddy and on a bad day caused you to ask yourself what is this hype all about?

[Daniel Quinn]

Thankfully I was too young to fall for linn/naim flat earth ideology , but I have recently been buying magazines from 1982-1992 and the bias is so palpable you do not need hindsight to see it .

on Saturday I read a copy of Audiophile magazine from 1991. The one in which pink triangle's anniversary is reviewed by Malcom Steward . There are more mentions of LP12 in the review , nothing about the design and technical features and whilst the review is favourable , the convoluted language , concepts and bollocks that steward comes out with disguise the fact that the LP12 is coloured and the pt is neutral is beyond belief .

[slinger]

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

The Flat Earth and its brainwash are still ingrained in people who were steeped in the at the time as we have just seen. Why praise Naim when we are looking at Japanese and US eye candy and why it is like hens teeth in the UK. The reason is the people who wouldn't import it and the people who wouldn't sell it, because they thought they knew something, where as in reality they knew sweet FA and just trotted out the brainwash .

[_D_S_J_R_]

Is Malcolm Steward still alive? I'm sure I read here that he was seriously injured in a car? accident a few months ago and not expected to survive. Having said that, he didn't half write some bollox and was severely brainwashed into the terrible twosome's vibe...