How many pairs of SL2s were made?

I sold my Maple pair about 18m ago and good ones with packaging etc were going for ~£2 - 3k at the time.

Neil

You need to update your profile to reveal which young upstart ousted those lovely SL2s.

I bought mine 2 years ago from my dealer for 5k euro, he has now another couple in cherry for pretty

much the same amount

Regards

Roberto

I paid just over £2k for mine back in 2010 and that was without the original packaging but i had to jump at them because they so rarely came up for sale and they were in the Maple finish i wanted to match my other speakers & equipment supports. 

I must have spent 9 months looking out for a pair and i'm guessing i'd have to wait even longer now. 

Naim sent me a set free when i bought my used pair (see previous post) but yes, can confirm they are now £10 each! 

Another maple SL2 user here, I upgraded from Kudos X2s. I got them last summer and recently added a matching maple n-Sub.

I can't imagine ever changing them!

Me.  Active SBLs to active Ovator S600s.

Good point; profile was out of date in several respects/now updated. When I decided to change the SL2s I listened to Ovator 600s and Focal Scala Utopias, but went for Kudos Titan T-88s in the end. Still very happy with them, but the new 808s do sound good.....

Neil

Me too, only passive

I still dream after the NBL, its the best speaker naim made.

I had a chat with Steve this morning. It seems that Naim cannot easily say how many pairs were sold, without resorting to interrogating the accounting system. Let's hope it's not SAP......

Not a very large number of pairs. [Of SL2s].

Or else the information would soon be forth-coming. Less than a thousand would be my guess, and Adam has noted before, Naim speakers only become recognicsed after they are discontinued, due to lack of demand.

Sad but true. ATB from George

Well i'm pleased Naim used to design speakers that were meant to backed up against a solid wall as my room isn't big enough for free space speakers. There's very little free space in your usual 3 bed semi detached, even one that's had the two reception rooms knocked into one as well as both chimney breasts removed to save even more space! 

Oh how Nigel's comment about SAP made me laugh! ��

@Garyi I have NBLs and, I agree they are good, but the DBLs are speakers that once heard are never forgotten. IMHO of course. 

Totally agree.  The one time I heard them they blew me away.

Ed

I had to wait ten months before a pair of SL2s came up on a certain website. (I'd had SBLs for years beforehand) They were a beautiful, mint condition maple pair and I paid £3250 for them. It was a bargain in my view though, and I can't see me parting with them as they are amazing speakers with exceptional transparency.

I gather Naim made very little profit from them though, because due to the precision machining and curved cabinets they were extremely expensive to make. Presumably that was a strong reason for them being discontinued.

Not enough pairs it seems, I have never listened to a pair and maybe I`m better off if I don`t ! especially if they are a big improvement on SBLs!!!

I sold my maple SL2s via a the fishy place about 18 months ago. I can't remember what I got for them. They were replaced by a pair of ART Alnico 8 in Walnut

Are SL2 drives still available and do Naim still service these?

Dibbles are Da Business (to use the modern vernacular)

Wonder how many DBLs were sold? I doubt its into 100s?

They were available for 17 years.  I doubt they would have been manufactured for that long if they were averaging under 6 sales per year.

I have recently acquired a mint pair of cherry DBL's, yes they so are "Da Business" Sound so natural, organic and have endless dynamics and scale. Room starts to give up well before they do.

I have read that naim sold an average of one pair per month of these massive designs, that's not many, but that info may not be accurate. NBL's were supposedly at 200 or so pairs, but they were a lot cheaper than DBL's and were in production for a lot less time. People were asking about the number of Aro's on another thread, think naim got to about 1300 of them.

p.s, to all DBL owners out there, I know that Ronseal high performance wood filler is used to patch up the underside of the cabinets, but can the aluminium pads be used on the top cabinets, or are they only meant for the bass box?

Thanks

Mario.

Its been a while since I used DBLs, but I'm pretty sure that the aluminum pads are ONLY on the upper mid/tweet cabinet....the bass cabinet uses a gasket with sealant. 

BTW, re DBLs vs NBLs...I'm pretty sure that the NBLs cost about as much to build (and maybe more) than the DBLs, but sold for quite a bit less. This alone would have been reason enough for discontinuing them. Pricing them higher would not have worked because they were not as good as DBLs. 

I had the pads on my DBLs all changed out by a fellow forum member....it involved using some sort of wood putty, as the upward spikes had breached the full thickness of the aluminum pads. And instead of stapling the new pads in place, MN tapped some small wood screws into their corners, making it easier to remove for future repairs. 

This is what the old pads looked like-as you can see, they were well past their prime. You would be suprised how big a difference having the upper cabinets decoupled (which after all is the 'D' in DBLs) from the metal frame. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c23o.../DBL%20pads.jpg?dl=0

Just to confirm; the metal pads are only between the mid/tweeter box & the bass driver box on the DBL. The latter is sealed with a silicone bead to the lower box. Incidentally, if making this seal, it's best to smear a thin layer of washing-up liquid on the mating surfaces & allow it to dry before applying the silicone - makes it much easier to separate the boxes should you need to.

Thanks Ron and Tony, looks like the aluminium pads are used on the upper tweeter/mid box and its stand which is attached to the "L" shaped box. Tony, not sure what you meant by "mid tweeter box and bass driver box", these two boxes should never touch. Well looks like I have a bit of tinkering to do as it looks like my bass driver box is the one with the aluminium pads, and also the gasket and silicone seal.

Does any one from naim care to comment, Richard Dane maybe, reason is that I remember reading to place a little pressure on the box in order indent the alu-pads to help position bass box in right place as you remove the spacers and allow the silicone to mate with the cabinet.

Need to clear this up and get things perfect.

Thanks,

mario.