Phono boards.

Posted by: Tony Lockhart on 24 August 2000

I'm about to take the plunge and buy a cheapy turn-table. For convenience I think a phono board for my 102 would be the wise choice. How much are these, including fitting?

Posted on: 24 August 2000 by Bob Edwards

In the UK I think they are about 85 pounds--corrections from anyone there ?

Bob

Posted on: 24 August 2000 by Kevin Hughes

Last I price I knew was £82, so £85 may be the current price. Any naim dealer should fit them for nothing, if they say they will charge you go of in a huff and do it youselfs, it's easy.

Kevin.

Posted on: 24 August 2000 by Tony Lockhart

Thanks very much for the info. That's far cheaper than I thought it would be.

Posted on: 25 August 2000 by Frank Abela

Fitting phono boards is a piece of cake, but if memory serves (I do this very rarely), a pair of small wire links need to be snipped to make the boards come into effect. Therefore, your dealer should do it for you, and usually this is free of charge.

In case you don't know, Naim make several different types of board for different types of cartridge. A cheap turntable will usually have a moving magnet (MM) cartridge mounted on it. These cartridges have a "high" output of about 2 or 3mV. Naim's board designed for this use is the NA522. You buy the boards in pairs, one per channel. The price of around £85 is per pair. Many higher end cartridges are usually based on a different principle of operation and called moving coil (MC)cartridges; these typically have a "low" output of about 0.4mV.

Some have higher or lower outputs than that. There is also a confusing type called a high-output moving coil cartridge, which basically gives an output high enough to be used as a moving magnet cartridge, but has some of the benefits of the higher end MC cartridges. The two types of board made by Naim for low output MC cartridges are the NA523S and the NA523K. They are the same design with one component changed on the K boards to allow them to deal with a very particular cartridge (a Linn Troika). That said, the K boards have found uses for other cartridges as well (but all are MC's).

The reason that I put the outputs in parenthesis is that both output levels are very low by comparison to a normal line device such as a tuner or a CD player whose output is around 2.3V.

Regards,
Frank.

Posted on: 26 August 2000 by Rico

quote:
Any naim dealer should fit them for nothing, if they say they will charge you go of in a huff and do it youselfs, it's easy.

Better still, find a dealer who will provide you with service excellence and buy the boards from them - saves you the stress of 'huff', and you don't need to get your fingers dirty having spent the same money.

Rico - musichead

ricomuzik@hotmail.com