NAD Explore the Features and Performance of the 5020 Turntable

5080 Turntable

Date of manufacture : ? - Jan 81

Please note that this document contains the text from the original product brochure, and some technical statements may now be out of date

The NAD 5020A and 5080A turntables are precisely engineered products employing the best in modern materials technology. They combine first-class record playing performance, long-term reliability, convenient operation, and an economical purchase price.

THE TONE ARM

In principle the job of a turntable is simple: to suspend the pickup cartridge in mid-air while spinning the record under it. But since the record may contain groove modulations as small as a wavelength of light, this job must be executed with extreme accuracy. The tone arm must be stable, rigid, vibration-free, friction-free, and very low in inertia so as not to alter or impede the tracking of the groove by the stylus.

Both NAD turntables employ the same high-quality tone arm. It is a straight tube, made of black- anodised low-resonance aluminum alloy, selected for an optimum combination of low mass and high rigidity. The open-frame plug-in headshell is molded from light-weight resonance-absorbing carbon fibre. The total effective mass of the tone arm, referred to the stylus tip, is a mere 10 grams-half that of some well known tone arms. The arm pivots on jewelled bearings whose friction is only a few thousandths of a gram! These features ensure agile tracking of even the most warped records-and they guarantee that, regardless of what phono cartridge you choose to use, from a budget model to the most refined moving-coil pickup, its full performance will be realised in this arm. When a pickup cartridge is installed in any pivoted tone arm the adjustment of stylus “overhang” is critical to ensure that the stylus will be tangent to the groove at all points on the record. In the new NAD tone arm this adjustment has been made easy: the cartridge carrier rides in parallel grooves in the headshell, allowing the cartridge to be moved back-and-forth with no fear of twisting; and cartridge alignment guidelines are conveniently molded into the underside of the platter mat.

AUTOMATIC OPERATION, FRONT-MOUNTED CONTROLS

While you may operate the tone arm by hand if you wish, a simple shift of the control lever provides fully automatic operation: the platter starts rotating, the arm moves to the lead-in groove and lowers the stylus, then at the end of the record the arm lifts and returns to its rest while the motor shuts off. The cycling mechanism is made of low-friction Delrin for extremely quiet, smooth operation, and it is completely disengaged from the arm except during cycling operations. Since there are no linkages attached to the arm, the convenience of automatic operation is obtained with absolutely no compromise in the arm’s excellent record-playing performance.

For still greater operating convenience the turntable controls (including the cueing lever for raising and lowering the arm) are located along the front edge of the base (plinth), making it easy for you to play records with the dust cover closed.