Good grief

good for them

Hear hear,

Hopefully Linn's £7m expansion won't burn to the ground in mysterious circumstances.

I posted it as I thought Naimies might have a passing interest in the latest chapter of a once great hi-fi manufacturer's continued descent into B&O/Bose territory.

If I had been doing a 'promo' for Linn (a bizzare interpretation if I may say so), do you think I would have entitled it "Good Grief" ?

Minky,

Do you mean –

“Linn factory burnt down”

“When?”

"Next Tuesday”

?

Cheers

Julian

now 82/135's

You'd think that a single guy with that much money could afford to buy his CDs.

Bad form, old boy.

May I request that if ever the Royals wanted to visit Naim HQ, Richard lock the door and tell 'em to sod off. At least until they've spent 6 months on the forum.

quote:

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Originally posted by hs:
They still are the company that does not give a good GD about users of their equipment and products

---

HS

To be fair to Linn or perhaps I should say Loewe but I am mentioning this here because Linn are the distributors for Loewe. I had a problem with my Aconda tv which having been subject to three service calls was beginning to annoy me. In the end (shortly before Christmas) I wrote to Linn Products and they organised one of their engineers to come to my house - he fixed the set right there and then. There were no issues in dealing with them - it was quite a pleasant experience.

A recent and balanced view.

Mike

I would think that with all the property he has he'd need more than one stereo system and certainly pride in the British products would leave room for a Naim stack.

Life is analogue

They don't have like doffing the cap.

John

quote:

---

Originally posted by julian62/135:
Minky,

Do you mean –

“Linn factory burnt down”

“When?”

"Next Tuesday”

?

Cheers

Julian

now 82/135's

---

Julian,

Tuesday sounds fine. Shall we say 4AM ? I'll bring the balaclavas, you bring the napalm.

This seems like the perfect thread to bring up an important issue:

Let's be honest: as users we love, or used to love, the sounds both Naim and Linn make, and although I haven't been following Linn gear the last years, I still suspect a lot of us have Linn as analogue source and sometimes even CD source (I do, and to be honest, I preferred at that time the most expensive Linn CD player, the Ikemi, over the Naim CDX - I didn't have the money for a CDS! And a few years before that, I thought the Rega CD player was having a good fight against the Naim CD3, which I ultimately bought).

But Linn and Naim, once more or less united, have seemed to become ennemies: in any case, in the whole of the Benelux, there is not one Naim dealer left who also sells Linn (which, since a few weeks, has had, as a very strange consequence, that there is, at least in Belgium and Luxemburg - I don't know about the Netherlands - no Naim dealer left, i.e. strictly NO-ONE who has new (post-2002) Naim gear to audition!!!). My ex-Naim dealer (who was imho the only serious one in Belgium) tells me that he was suddenly offered the choice between keeping Linn and losing Naim or vice-versa - and he chose Linn, really not because of personal preference, but because he has to earn his bread!

Today I want to fit a prefix to my LP12 - I'm certainly not going to give my LP12 to one of the current Belgian "Naim-dealers", who apart from probably not knowing more about Naim than the average junior member on this forum, in any case know nothing about an LP12 because they never touched one. My ex-Naim dealer (still Linn-dealer) of course (still) knows how to fit such a thing, but I have to lend him a Hi-Cap myself for him to try it! i understand from previous posts that the problem also sometimes occurs with Linn-dealers not knowing how to fit an Aro-arm to an LP12, etc..

In the hifi-wise "civilised" U.K. I suppose Naim and Linn cannot avoid having the same dealers (I cannot imagine either of them telling Graham's of London to choose!) but it is unfortunate that they (or at least one of them) is trying (successfully) to do so in other markets. Rega, Linn, Naim and similar reputable marks should be showing their strenghts, and together winning market shares, through dealers which only sell marks they believe in (which will probably mean they'll sell for example all three of the abovementioned marks), rather then being obliged to sell only one of those marks ... alongside B&O.

I suspect nearly all members of this forum have, more than once, "converted' (perverted?) innocent music-lovers into changing their Sony or Philips-hifi into "real" hi-fi, and often that will have been at a "below-Naim/Linn" level (my last "perverted" friend went off with Rega CD/Pro-Ject amplifier/AE 109's, which I found a beautiful starting point - although I must admit the amplifier broke down a few months later). A certain number of those "converts" will catch the upgraditis and ultimately end up with (notably) Naim gear worth more than they would ever dare admit in public. But they will probably only do so if their first dealer sold them "musical" gear in the first place.

BTW: last Saturday, from the most respectable Naim dealer in Belgium (the only one who had a second hand Naim stock - as I mentioned above, no dealer has new stock!) I bought a SuperCap from someone who "up"-graded to ... B&O. I am not making this up; the vendor was not really proud of the fact, but what else could he offer to the gentleman, as he didn't have any new Naim (or Linn, or Rega, or whatever good) gear in stock.

Flat-earth dealers, unite !

Carl

It is not much better here in the Netherlands, though last time I wanted to demo a Naim CDP I did managed to find the combination (CD5 w Flatcap) here:

http://www.hificorner.be/BranHCp.asp?l=EN

But that was about a year ago so maybe he no longer does Naim.

Have you tried contacting PHONOLOGIC at http://www.phonologic.com, the naim distributors for Benelux. They have a dealer "map" on their site, but I don't know if it is upto date.

Regards
GEOFF

hs, thanks. To be fair to you, once into the thread the title is barely visible and easy to miss, and I didn't include any preface to the post which would have made the point of it clearer.

Minky -

yes indeed "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like......victory"

JCT

now 82/135's

quote:

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Originally posted by Patrick Dixon:

quote:

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You'd think that a single guy with that much money could afford to buy his CDs.

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He's a going-on elderly widower actually. I'm sure he doesn't have much time to sit down and listen to music ... which is probably why he's got a Linn system.

---

..may be this "poor" guy has the Linn for free. he may also have tube amps too (hahaha).

Hi carl
just wanted to tell you that I've sent you a mail.

Hi Carl,

In the Netherlands there are dealers selling both Linn and Naim, for instance Snijders HiFi in Rotterdam and CAC Audio in Leiden. Both excellent shops with a wide range of brands. Check them out I'd say!

Regards, Bas

Bas,

Whereas I have over the last years visited all Belgium Naim dealers, and I also know that the sole Luxemburg dealer is "quitting " Naim, I would not want to express an opinion about the Netherlands Naim (or Linn) dealers, none of which I know (except for a good 'flat earth' dealer in Maastricht, but it was many years ago since I auditioned anythinh at his place), so perhaps indeed I wasn't as clear as I should have been! This being said, I remain concerned about the situation in Belgium and Luxemburg!