Warning: extremely niche-audience post ahead.
I’ve recently had the opportiunity to perform a service and calibration on an original Naim NAIT integrated amplifier (new capacitors and bias adjustment). Fortunately I have also been able to look inside an identical model that had a dealer service and recap in 2018, so I could see what was used then.
I based my service component choices off of the dealer-serviced model and also off of the incredibly detailed post on Hi-Fi AF about recapping the very similar NAIT 2 (1988). Since no such parts list was easily findable for the original NAIT (1983) I’m posting this here.
If you’re doing this work, feel free to follow the Hi-Fi AF post regarding the NAIT 2 — these amps are extremely similar to work on, and the original one if anything is a bit simpler to take apart. There’s only one version of the original NAIT — it always has a built-in MM phono section.
This is essentially just a parts list and assumes you know what you’re doing in recapping a vintage amplifier. If you don’t, I suggest starting out on something less valuable (or in any case follow the basic guidelines around desoldering, soldering, and mains voltage precautions that I laid out in my post about the Linn Lingo).
Below are the parts I found in the dealer-recapped NAIT, along with notes about what I used for these components, and what I found as original parts.
- 2x Kemet 10000uF 40V “snap-in” style large cans. ALC20A series. This series can be tracked down but was not readily available to me; I used the very similar ALC10A parts as recommended by Hi-Fi AF. (The original 1980s parts were 6800uF cans.)
- The phono section had 7x Sic-Safco Promisic C031 47uF 40V axial gold-case capacitors. These appear to be obsolete and are rare and expensive to obtain. I suspect that these were actually the original caps that had been left in place on purpose during the service. (That said, the other un-recapped NAIT used some generic Elnas for these parts, so who knows.) I used Vishay 47uF 63V axials (MAL203138479E3) for these. But real talk, is anyone actually going to use the NAIT’s phono input at this point anyway? You might like…
