Has anyone out there ever taken apart a NAD T763 receiver? I am wondering if there is a recommended sequence for pulling off all of the assorted bits in order to pull the main circuit board. One of the caps has gone bad on my main board and I am confident in my abilities to replace the bad component once the circuit board is out but... not certain of the best way to get the main board out.
Have fun getting the T763's Huge heat sink out.lol I like Franks way, but if you do decide to do it, make sure you discharge all the caps by leaving it unplugged for a while like Nuck said.
I was at my local dealer recently chatting with one of the salesguys (this shop is very pro-NAD, BTW) and he actually recommended staying away from NAD surround receivers. He related a story where they visited the Canadian NAD facilities and the repair center was full of broken receivers. Probably part of it is that there is a lot more that can go wrong with a surround receiver than say a power amp or CD player.
My Dealer claims he has had hardly any come back as well.
I too was at the NAD repair facilities in Pickering Ontario when I owned the T762. I would say 70 percent of all the receivers on the bench were the 742 and 752's. It seems those were their largest issue. I think they have cleared this up. I got my hands on their brand spanking new stuff a few weekends ago. I Like it.
Frank- You probably sold a lot of NAD receivers in your day. Problems aside, what do you feel about the sound of the NAD AVR's? And how do you compare it to other high end brands?
Mine is way beyond the warranty period and I am too broke to send it in for service so after a cooling off period (shortly after posting my original question) I dove back in and pulled it all apart. Wasn't too bad once I realized that I was going at it from the wrong direction and the sequence is to pull the front end off first. Took a couple of days to find the replacement capacitor but found some locally today. Hoping to have access to a soldering station tomorrow and if all goes well have a working receiver again. Hoping I can remember where all of the jumpers go but other than that should be a simple matter.
I sold quite a few 742s and 752s. I also sold the older models which I forget the numbers of. Straight up, NAD didn't sell that many AV receivers. They didn't have the cachet nor the market awareness. They sounded very good and in those days were heaploads better than the equivalent Denons thanks to their better power supplies (a weakness for Denon in those days).
Denon improved their offerings tremendously from the '06 models (and largwer '05 models) so that NAD became a nonsense by comparison. people never ask for NAD surround amps, they ask for Denon, Pioneer and Yamaha. Now, they also ask for Onkyo for obvious reasons.
I ahve not had the opportunity to hear the latest NADs but the lack of TrueHD and DTS-MA decoding, irrespective of whether this is a useful or wanted feature, is a major downside from a sales point of view. People want to know their machine will be futureproof so if it doesn't say it on the tin, then they are less interested in it. We're a specialist so we get more time with the customer and can explainthat all players have to be able to output uncompressed PCM etc so all they need is uncompressed PCM capability, but most people don't buy this way. If the box doesn't get ticked, there's a good chance the sale is lost.
Interesting Frank. Thanks for the reply. Do people actually buy the Pioneer,Yamaha and Denon over the NAD based on Sound quality alone?lol I hope not. My dealer carries all the Yamaha's and Pioneer Elites,and while they sound ok, still don't compare to the NAD AVR's. But, as you say, they do come with every setting, and feature and audio codec, and video switching known to mankind. My dealer says the basic average Joe out there always buys the Pioneer and Yamaha based on feature set alone. The Onkyo, I finally got to hear and must say in Sound quality alone I would put it up near the best of them, and comes with all the features. Must be a very easy brand to sell these days. Onkyo that is. Thanks for the info Frank. Cheers.
That's correct. I think NAD's looks don't help - the latest variants are much better in my view but grey is grey no matter what you do to it. AVRs seem to be at the behest of the fashion brigade.
The only one bucking the trend is the Onkyo. It's ugly as sin (good quality finish on the black ones notwithstanding), but its high performance value and the fact it ticks all the boxes features-wise makes it a sure-fire winner. Quite frankly (pun intended) the 875 is cracking value for money in almost every way. The Arcams only beat it from a musical sense and even then it's not like it's a million miles away from them.
So where is NAD in all this? Out in the cold I'm afraid. Nobody, but absolutely nobody, comes in looking for a NAD AV receiver. That said, I hope NAD continue doing what they're doing because their kit is good and they usually offer great value for money, and when it comes really good, the NADs will be the ones to beat.
Frank, good to hear your comments. They match almost exact of what my dealer said. I also was talking to the guy at Just Hi Fi here in my home town who carry, NAD,Rotel,Arcam,Onkyo Integra and Yamaha for AVR's. He was saying the same thing, he said out of all the great sounding AVR's they sell, 80 percent of them are the Yamaha;s.lol That day I was listening to everything I could, mainly the Bryston Pre Amps. He was saying that Musically nothing touches the Arcam and NAD AVR's. But nobody cares about that anymore. He said basically the same thing as you. That once the smoke clears with all this new features and what not, and companies like NAD and Arcam get up to snuff, that he hopes people start caring what the product sounds like again. Instead if it looks pretty, and has DSP modes.lol. Then NAD will be one to beat again. But he was weary if that was ever going to happen again. I guess time will tell. By then, I'll have two separate systems anyway.lol