/////////// AMPLIFER WAS RECAPPED/////////////The NAD 3140 is often referred to be the 3020's “bigger brother”. Actually, these two amps have just the preamp section in common (a 1020, more or less) but everything else is quite different. Introduced slightly after the 3020, the 3140 was an ambitious design, with unique features at the time. Its power section was available as a separate power amplifier, under the 2140 name. It has been the first amp in audio history to use a Bass EQ circuit, aimed at extending bass frequency response of small loudspeakers. Unfortunately, it has not been as highly praised as the smaller 3020, though it certainly deserved much, much more attention. The 3140 and the 2140 won the Grand Prix AudioVideo Awards in 1981.

What's inside?
The 3140 is a rather complex design, especially if compared to the 3020 or the 3120. First of all, it is rated at 40 watts per channel (on a 8 ohm load) but - as usual with NAD amplifiers - its real power output and dynamic headroom make it comparable to 80/100 watt per channel traditional amps. The beefy PSU makes use of two separate power transformers and these give the power stage enough energy to put out more than 100 watts per channel on a 2 ohm load (RMS) and more than 200 watts on a 20ms peaks, still @ 2 ohm. Hence, do not consider the 3140 as a 40 watt per channel amplifier, because its dynamic headroom is simply huge and will put any standard 40 watter to shame quite easily.

Massive power output aside, this amplifier is plenty on unusual features. First of all, it can be bridged and used in mono (like the 2140 power amp). Then it offers the unique “Bass EQ” feature, which adds a 12dB boost at 45 and 70 Hz, thus extending the bass range of small speakers by an octave. This boost would draw all the energy available of any standard amplifier (leading it to clipping), but the 3140 has enough power reserve to deal with this requirement quite easily.

The 3140 has an infrasonic filter (12 dB/oct below 15 Hz, always in conjunction with the bass eq), a mono switch, the loudness filter and a bizarre “low level mode” that drops the amplifier gain by 20 dB, for quieter listening sessions, at night, for example. There's also a rear switch that activates the usual NAD soft-clipping circuit and the uncommon SLC circuit, aimed to compensate the impedance of different speaker cables. SLC stands for “speaker-lead compensator”, indeed, and is intended to compensate the effects of excessively long (or high-resistance) speaker cables. LED power outputs indicate how many watts the 3140 is pumping into your speakers (red zone is at 100 watts).

If this doesn't seem enough, add two phono inputs with adjustable capacitance (100, 200, or 320 pF on PHONO 2, a 10dB higher gain for high-output MC cartridges on PHONO 1), two tape deck loops (even with DIN connectors), and preamp/power amp bridged input/output. And there's two of these, one marked NORMAL (with frequency response limited to 15-35,000 Hz) and one marked LAB, which extends the bandwidth to 10-70,000 Hz. Claimed damping factor is 100.

It is a rather heavy amp, for being rated at just 40 watt: slightly less than 8 kg (17 lbs). It was available both in silver and the NADish dark grey/black finish.
When you call please mention you found this ad listing on OKz.ca