Two's company

David Price turns back the HFC time machine to the late-Eighties as he remembers the classic integrated that is the Naim Nait 2

- David Price

In 1983 Naim Audio launched what was arguably one of the silliest amplifiers of the Eighties. In many ways it wasn’t very good at all – but in others it was brilliant. The princely sum of £253 bought you something that was lower-powered and less well-specified than all its rivals. The amp came in a normal Naim half-size aluminium case, a beautiful and expensive thing to make. To this, a low cost volume and balance control was fitted. Cheap plastic fascia buttons were the order of the day and the balance control only worked on one channel and gave 3dB of attenuation. It appeared as a plastic stalk jutting out of the front, as designed by founder Julian Vereker.

Inside, it was a bit more special. The single main circuit board was better laid out than many amplifiers of its day and the custom-made toroidal power transformer respectable enough. The power amplifier section, running in Class AB, was sturdy and delivered more current than its lowly power figure suggested. The company was still using DIN sockets then for everything except the phono input, and it sported banana sockets rather than binding posts – to which the company expected you to attach its own Naim NAC 04 speaker cable.