The Obscure and Sublime.... At Least In My World

I have a pair of these, and if you've been around audio for a while, you'll probably recognize them as a/d/s/ L***. ......and you'd be wrong...... kind of! They're NAD 20. So, here's the story.

In the late 70's and 80's when a/d/s/, otherwise known as Analog and Digital Systems was at the peak of their influence in the audio industry, they were tied in one way or another with Braun, the iconic German electronics company more known on this side of the Atlantic for their coffee makers and shavers. NAD, which was also a highly thought of company at this time went to them with a proposal to design and build some speakers. But for reasons unknown, a/d/s/ turned them down, but redirected NAD to Braun. This part is clear as muddy waters because, somehow around this time, a/d/s/ which had previously been a subsidiary of Braun bought out the parent company or at least the audio end of it. This ended up not going well because of some economics issues vis-a-vis doller vs. Deutschemarks. In any case, Braun did in fact build the two speaker offerings of NAD at this time, the 20 and the 30.

The 20 which is the subject of this post was a relatively small floor-standing cabinet 2-way with a dome tweeter and an 8" cone woofer. The 30 was a larger floor-standing 3-way speaker. 

My personal history with a/d/s/ speakers mostly center around a pair of L1290s I found in dilapidated cosmetic condition which I refinished and used for quite a while a few years. Along with them, I also had pairs of L200s and L300s which are the last of my collection of a/d/s/ speakers from that time. When my son inherited an old Yamaha receiver from my collection, I also passed along the L300s as well.

So, other than from a historic sense, how does the NAD 20s enter the picture? Some years back, I came across a pair listed on the local Craigs List for something like $75-80. I met the man and found them without grills and a badly scratched up woofer cone courtesy of his cat. I ended up paying about $50 for them. When I finally got around to hooking them up, they actually didn't sound half bad even with the bum woofer! When I started researching, I found virtually no information and certainly no sources for spare parts! But I went ahead and dismantled them anyway and found, not surprisingly, Braun parts numbers on the drivers since they looked just like the ones on my a/d/s/ speakers. Unfortunately, these numbers didn't match up with anything I could find here in the U.S. so I had to take a leap of faith and just find a similar Braun driver with a/d/s/ part number. I ordered it and it looked identical to the original but the speaker refused to work when I connected it to test using my office system Advent Response 420S receiver. So I decided I had done something wrong and set them aside.

After sitting for about 3-4 years, last week, as part of an effort to clean up, I decided to take another shot at them. However, I had also, reorganized my office sound system as well, now connected to an old Onkyo TX-82 receiver which is rated for a mere 45 watts per channel, but these 45 real 80s watts, not the "amp-on-a-chip" kind! Much to my surprise, those speakers fired up and sounded just fine!

As much as I'd like to tell you that I'm that good and those speakers were healed by me; that's just not the case. I'm pretty sure the issue was that I was too stupid to realize that those speakers were 4 ohms (pretty common for Braun) and my little vintage baby receiver couldn't drive the load! So yeah, my bad! The nice outcome is that my son's hulking older Yamaha receiver drives them just fine and he's been happily holed up in his room listening to them constantly for the last week.