Naim NAP-135
The NAP-135 is a mono power amp from Naim Audio, an English company. Audio (March 1992, p.77) said Naim was often talked about in the US, but its products took some effort to actually hear. The amp first shows up in the American record in Audio's "What's New" column (December 1985, p.16). That item pointed to its attention to real-world problems. The cooling fan stayed off until the chassis warmed up, and ran at full speed only when music was being played loudly. It rated the amp at 75 watts continuous into 8 ohms, with 500-VA transient capability and noise and distortion of all types below 0.1%. Unusually, those figures were measured with speakers rather than test loads.
Audio (March 1992, p.76) later ran a full Equipment Profile of a pair of NAP-135s used with the NAC 72 preamp and Hi-Cap power supply. It listed the mono amps at $2,995 each, 29 lbs, 17 × 3 × 11.75 in., 105 mV sensitivity for 1 watt into 8 ohms, and 22 kilohm input impedance. The reviewer found the DIN-based cabling took some figuring out at first. He praised the amps' stability into low-capacitance loads, even with no output buffers. Bench measurements showed premature clipping starting in the positive half-cycle at about 140 watts. How much distortion rose depended heavily on how hot the amp was (Audio, March 1992, p.84).
Little else is documented in the archive. Naim's line at the time also included tuners, integrated amps, electronic crossovers, and speakers (Audio, March 1992, p.77).
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