Buying a NAD 3020 in the seventies

[sreten]

I was there

customer : I'd like like to listen to a NAD 3020

salesman : Why ? they are not very good (we haven't got any in stock)

customer : Why ? What's wrong with them ?

salesmen : They are unreliable, we've had more returns of them than any other amplifier.
(When we've got them in stock they are the only budget amplifier we can shift, nothing
else gets a look in, but then I don't mind completely misrepresenting real information)

customer : So other amplifiers are more reliable ?

salesman : Yes, this one we've never had come back .... (or sold any)

etc....

rgds, sreten.

[vinylkid58]

The High End Store - YouTube

jeff

[planet10]

I personally sold 100s & 100s of these. I've owned at least a dozen. It is true that other amps were more reliable, but it still took about 10 years before they started breaking in any sort of regular fashion. And many are still alive 30+ years later.

dave

[vinylkid58]

No doubt the one I had was originally sold by you. It served me well for many years as a headphone amp and preamp.

jeff

[Ian Finch]

It's down to price, innit? Here they sold off UK review copy as a premium product.
Suddenly they didn't look or sound so good. The nostalgia market is another matter - it's quite brisk!

[activexp]

My 3020A still works perfectly Sold a shed load of them during my time in retail, can't recall any coming back. All well and good except my stock of alternative amps was stuck on the shelf gathhering dust

[Kjeldsen]

Originally Posted by vinylkid58

No doubt the one I had was originally sold by you. It served me well for many years as a headphone amp and preamp.

jeff

Try it as a poweramp. I think that's the best way to use a 3020. It really kicks ***, if you dont need to much power. It's not the most refined sound, but it seems to do nothing wrong. The preamp I find a quite dull.

[sakis]

ok ... here is some statistics

in my company we repair or upgrade about 400 amplifiers per year so if you really want a picture i can give it for you ....

in 400 amplifiers we actually have to repair very few.... they might have a lot of small issues but no actual damage

so ...an average commercial Japanese amplifier like luxman pioneer technics akai or similar ( generally speaking for makes of that time around the 80's) will happily work for about 30-35 years and when it comes to service will only need a very good cleaning pots and switches all brand new fresh capacitors a couple of trimmers and that's about it ...obviously and given the quality of parts used expect this amplifier to live another 50 years this time since caps inside are 105 deg. and beefed up regarding capacity and voltage .....

now as about 3020 in Athens only about 2.000 pcs were sold and so far we only had only 1 ( one) call received for a service request .... reason is that 2000 pcs of 3020 all failed and are thrown away since repair attempts also failed and that happened long time ago ...so 3020 now can only be found in scrap yards or flea markets

even later models where too complicated without a reason or fail for a number of wrong issues such is thermal stress ,marginal trafos ,soldering and/or wrong choice of parts that never happens to Japanese amplifiers ....

sorry to disappoint you i am just laying out the facts here ....

[sakis]

by the way one remarkable thing is that Greeks used to be party animals so that means that at some point all of these amps was pushed to hell ...difference is that Japs survive while NAD failed

[activexp]

Originally Posted by sakis

ok ... here is some statistics

in my company we repair or upgrade about 400 amplifiers per year so if you really want a picture i can give it for you ....

in 400 amplifiers we actually have to repair very few.... they might have a lot of small issues but no actual damage

so ...an average commercial Japanese amplifier like luxman pioneer technics akai or similar ( generally speaking for makes of that time around the 80's) will happily work for about 30-35 years and when it comes to service will only need a very good cleaning pots and switches all brand new fresh capacitors a couple of trimmers and that's about it ...obviously and given the quality of parts used expect this amplifier to live another 50 years this time since caps inside are 105 deg. and beefed up regarding capacity and voltage .....

now as about 3020 in Athens only about 2.000 pcs were sold and so far we only had only 1 ( one) call received for a service request .... reason is that 2000 pcs of 3020 all failed and are thrown away since repair attempts also failed and that happened long time ago ...so 3020 now can only be found in scrap yards or flea markets

even later models where too complicated without a reason or fail for a number of wrong issues such is thermal stress ,marginal trafos ,soldering and/or wrong choice of parts that never happens to Japanese amplifiers ....

sorry to disappoint you i am just laying out the facts here ....

Hmmm.....guess I sold all the good ones