NAD 7020e

Serial Number T72E25257

Circa 1988

MSRP - $279

Cost adjusted for inflation - $800

For Sale $888

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NAD (New Acoustic Dimension) was established in 1982 by audiophile engineer Martin Borish. He said of the 7020i “It is the best product NAD has made to date” and he had a particular affinity for the culmination of his years of success with the 3020 amplifier married to the best tuner NAD had developed at that point in history.

The NAD 7020e is the NAD 3020e Amplifier integrated with NAD 4020 tuner in a single package. The “e” version made significant improvements upon the tuner drift issues that were emblematic with the original version.

The 3020 achieved a legendary status as a Giant Killer of it’s day, especially the phono circuitry that is still to this day one of the quietest and detailed RIAA circuits ever found in a device priced under $1000. 

The conservative rating of 20 watts is on face value very misleading when you consider this amp can drive loads all the way down to 2 ohms, squeezing an impressive real world power of over 70 watts out of a push pull design featuring very robust drivers!

Given that one of the foundational principles of NAD was to bring a high end audio product within reach of the MidFi consumer, one would not expect to see such overbuilt aspects as the 3055 output transistors that are employed here! These are the same power transistors that were being used in the competitions amplifiers boasting outputs of 60 watts rating.

NAD kept costs reasonable by using quality off brand capacitors such as ‘Elite’; ‘Giant’ and ‘Teapo’, many of which still measure ‘in spec’ some 35 years later! The ability to forecast where and which components to compromise on while still achieving the renowned sound was as much an engineering achievement as it was sales genius.

Today many of the ‘compromised’ components such as the original capacitors have outlived their life expectancy by well over 15 years however, that presents an amazing opportunity to take this well designed circuitry to ‘Next Level’, by replacing these off brand outlived components with the very best modern equivalents with a price no object (almost) mentality!

We have gone through every electrolytic in the Power Supplies as well as the Flat Amp, Tone Amp and Power Amplification circuitry and carefully chosen the ‘best’ capacitors for the job at hand including some of the best capacitors made for Audio applications such as Nichicon Gold and UKA series as well as the highest quality Stacked film Poly Cap’s for such critical applications as the input from the phono cartridge for example. The Power Amp was also augmented by adding stacked film Poly capacitors in parallel with the main 3500 uF power caps right at the output transistors where they reduce the ESR and add refinement to higher frequency filtering capacity, where much of the soundstage details live.

The 7020 had a few drawbacks such as…

The tuner stays powered even when in other input modes such as phono. 

For vinyl purists, many of whom seek out this pre-amp for it’s outstanding phono performance, this was a potential drawback. 

The amplifier had the standard spring loaded speaker terminals where audio purists prefer Universal binding posts to accommodate higher end speakers. There was no Pre-Amp output or input available.

With this in mind, we modified this piece to add these features as well as other performance related custom modifications.

As is the case with almost every mass produced piece of gear from this era, there were discrepancies between the design team and the assembly team resulting with sub-par wire routing and what we consider best manufacturing practices for a piece of high end audio gear…again, the NAD WAS a compromise to meet a reasonable price target and now in it’s resurrection, we have had the opportunity to ‘fix’ all these shortcomings to make this piece the absolute best it can be. 

We have separated all the A/C wiring schedule from the DC wiring to eliminate potential EMF interference between these high gain stages and their menace. The original DC Jumpers on the board were also shortened as much as possible to provide the absolute lowest resistance as possible as well as eliminating potential for further ‘stray’ currents to be inadvertently induced into the power amplifier stage.

The DC offset (Center Voltage) was adjusted to 0vdc +- 5mv! That is a margin 6 times tighter than the manufacturer’s specification. Idle current was adjusted as per manufacturer’s instructions to exactly 30mv. These values were checked multiple times during testing over a 4 hour period and remained rock solid at ‘normal’ operating temperatures.

One of the biggest killers of vintage amplifiers is the deterioration of heatsink compound resulting in a loss of adequate heat removal from the power devices ultimately creating an avalanche effect and destruction of the devices.

When we removed the original output transistors we observed another flaw all too familiar where the application of heat compound was not even applied adequately at the factory! We remedy this problem For Life by using Silpads instead of Mica and paste. These pads will continue to provide better than original protection indefinitely!

Tuner alignment was performed bringing improvements to both the sensitivity as well as the channel separation. The tuner was modified so it can be completely shut down when other inputs are being used via a power switch on the back of the receiver. 

We also modified with a green LED that illuminates the power switch when the power is on but the Tuner is shut off so the user can tell it is powered on even with no tuner being displayed.

PreAmp input/output was added to the build and the standard interconnection cabling from the flat amp to the driver stage was upgraded to high quality shielded audio interconnect cable at 2 times the wire gauge and shield quality.

The aesthetics of NAD was always a bit understated and that is no exception for this piece. Despite this, we take the final appearance of our work seriously and as such, the metal cabinet was stripped down and recoated with a beautiful ‘like new’ paint job in the classic NEC charcoal metallic finish.

The biggest aesthetic discrepancy is with the top of the faceplate where there is a small ¼” dent in the middle and some minor scuffing along the top edge. If the new owner is concerned, the faceplate is very easily replaceable if he/she decides to do so in the future by removing only 5 screws.