NAD Quality?


I have considered upgrading my vintage NAD receiver with a newer NAD unit. What concerns me is the amount of "refurbished" NAD gear that is being sold by various outlets.

Were these units returned simply because the owners were not happy with the sound, etc?

Or, were they returned because they were defective? With the amount of refurbed NAD gear that is available I have to wonder about the overall quality of the brand.
group3e11
Ok..I used to work at a high end store a couple of years ago..for a couple of years. We sold NAD. Here is what I know. NAD home theater recievers had an issue with failing, not all of them, some were just lemons. When we took back the lemon..we sent it to NAD and they would fix it and send it back to us with a "refurbished by NAD" sticker on it. About half of these refurbs would fail again. The other half worked great.
However, all of the 2 channel stuff worked fine, we never had any problems. Except 712 reciever display burning out.
Generally the old NAD stuff (80's) was made to a higher quality control level than the newer stuff (90's-00's). NAD production of 80's units came from Japan. Most newer stuff is from China, with the disc players coming from Singapore.
I have an 1155 preamp (Japan), this is a great piece. I had a 2200PE and 2600A 2ch amps..these were great amps but the circuit boards were thin..meaning they warp after 20 years and traces break.
Anyway..you should be ok with newer 2ch stuff and CD players. In fact the C372 and C320bee are outstanding. DVD players and Home theater recievers, watch out. In fact, go with Denon on those.
I still have a NAD 1600 preamp/tuner I purchased as a "blemished" unit in 1991. Still works great. Recently added a NAD CD/DVD changer; verdict is still out.
Oh yeah..the NAD T753 was a lemon..all of them came back, almost. To add the above post by me: the C272 is excellent as well. The first generation NAD DVD players T550? had issues ..wouldn't play certain DVD's or cd-r's. Not surprising really, Marantz's 1st gen dvd player had the same problems.
NAD service is excellent/quick though...they are familiar with how to fix things. I am sorry to sound like I am bashing their products..I just happened to work at an authorized dealer..so of course I saw all of the broken units..jaded I suppose.
At least they stand behind their product.

The warranty replacement for my 4-month old M55 Universal Disc Player is currently on backorder.