NAD 3140
The NAD 3140 is one of those integrated amplifiers that tends to be mentioned in the same breath as the legendary 3020, but with considerably less fanfare. What the record shows: it was a budget integrated amplifier designed to reproduce the 3020's famously musical performance at even lower cost, built during the period when NAD was deeply focused on performance-per-dollar engineering.
The headline feature is soft clipping — a circuit that gently limits the output waveform to eliminate harsh clipping when the amplifier's power limits are exceeded. Owner accounts back this up, describing the 3140 as having a beautifully clean, slightly warm character, with soft clipping that genuinely makes it hard to provoke into harsh distortion even when pushed. A retrospective review in Hi-Fi News put it well, noting that the 3140 does not draw attention to itself but simply makes music in an effortless manner — high-end behavior at an entry-level price. That said, at least one retrospective critic felt it lacked the last degree of inner detail and deep-bass authority of the 3020, offering instead its own gentleness and listenability. The 3140 is rated at 50 watts per channel into 8 ohms, with one source specifying 20Hz to 20kHz, both channels driven, at no more than 0.02% distortion (IHF). Another source lists the rating as 50 watts per channel continuous into 8 ohms. The period press noted the 3140's plain faceplate was backed by the best sound-for-the-dollar anywhere (Audio, May 1981, p.67), and that its amplifier response is limited by low- and high-pass filters to a range of 15 to 35,000 Hz (HiFi-Stereo, March 1981, p.44). The 3140's phono input was also noted to handle a wide range of cartridges, from low-output moving-coil to high-level sources, with the clipping-power output in bridged mode reaching 176 watts into 8 ohms (HiFi-Stereo, March 1981, p.46).
A couple of honest caveats. Production years and the original retail price are not documented in the archive, and neither are dimensions or weight. There's also a note of caution for anyone hunting one today: owners observe the faceplates dent easily, so good cosmetic examples are not particularly common. The 3140 appears to have been a genuinely musical, forgiving amplifier from NAD's most celebrated era — just one that didn't leave much of a paper trail.
- Integrated amplifier
- 50W per channel into 8 ohms
- Soft clipping circuitry
- Part of NAD's high-current amplifier approach
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