NAD 3140 Stereo Integrated Amplifier Manual (2024)

brochure - big ears

instruction/owners manual - Jeepo65

service manual -

NAD Integrated Amplifiers

Reviewed Sep 07th, 2021 by musiclover100

Listening to my recent purchase of a Nad 3140 I'm blown away by the sound I'm hearing. I thought what I had Yamaha was good but this amp knocks it out. The bass and extended highs are fabulous and it's a great excuse to go through my vinyl and cassette collection like they were released today. If you can find one jump on it and and enjoy music like you have never heard, make sure you get a good one as like all old equipment it will need servicing ENJOY.

Reviewed Jun 28th, 2018 by anderscastle

Great sounding amp! Silky smooth and great soundstage gives hours upon hours of pure listening pleasure.
Those are the headlines.
Let’s go through the outside. This is a bit of unusual amplifier I terms of styling, it looks like every other NAD amp from that period, greenish color, tons and tons of plastic knobs but there are exceptions, the LED power meters on the front, which properly was the only NAD amp to have that from that period, you only saw it earlier with the 3080 3060 3040 which had VU power meters. But those aren’t the only somewhat odd features, when you talk NAD. Speaker EQ, which have two settings and will lift the signal below 40 hz or 70 hz depending on the type of speaker. ‘Mono’ which I find somewhat funny even when it came out, but I guess I was not about the function itself I was more about having all possible functions at hand and mono was properly something you could squeeze in. The rest is sort of common in NAD terms.
The inside, well you have a 1020 and a 2140 squeezed into one box, which if you enjoy listening to vinyl you get the one and only and brilliant phono stage from 3020 which is in nearly every NAD from that period. Two massive transformers and an okay layout.
The rear you get two phono stage and Bias settings which is really cool. Two tape inputs, bridging functions, and SLC?!?? Yes I hear you what the h**l is SLC? Well it stands for speaker lead compensator??! and what the h**l is Speaker Lead Compensator? well it is what it say it is, apparently in NAD Research and Development (RD) they thought that they had to compensate or help there customers to get the full potential out of there amp, meaning if you have the speakers somewhat far from the amp and the speaker wire is thin the SLC will compensate that, well that’s the idea. Soft clipping, which is standard on nearly every other amp from that period.
If you get this amp it will 99 percent have a transformer that hums, and in this case TWO! Transformers and it’s a common problem with the amps from this period, and I have looked at them, at they are Chinese made, which doesn’t mean that they are all bad, it just the period, which they were build was in the early eighties and late seventies and china has come a long way since then with Huawei and so on, but in that time period, Mao had died in 1976 and there was a small uprising and order was restored and many of the economy sanctions was lifted cause the people wanted chance and the ability to make some money for them self’s and since then they had a steep learning curve, but still these transformer were made just 5 6 years after Mao died and the country worked towards what it is today, but the whole idea in the first place to send the production to Taiwan in the first place was to make affordable great sounding amps and then you have to get parts cheap as well as labor cost.
But! Sound is what it is all about in the end? When used with a Rega Planar 2 (the old one) and a decent cartridge it will play almost everything well, and you will have hours and hours of listening joy so keep digging the grates at the thrifts store this amp will help you to make it at enjoyable experience.
I tried on a Rega Planar 3 and a Nagaoka MP 110 and I listen to Dire Straits debut album and the bass response on Six blade knife is phenomenal and it presents a clear and dry Hi-Hat.
The Goldberg Variations with Glenn Gould, the 1981 recording you can really hear the piano string and plug when the bar hits the string, and for better or worse his singing.
It is super smooth to listen to, and a bit slow, you don’t get a fast response, but that’s okay, it has plenty of umff to back up a punchy bass, a large orchestra, or just four dudes in a room rocking out.
It will properly to some people sound a bit dark, but if I can use coffee terms to explain it, a Latte has that little splash of espresso in the bottom and lots and lots of hot milk on top to balance it all out a bit, that’s your everyday consumer amp today. The 3140 is an espresso with a splash of milk in it, full flavor of coffee with the just the right amount of milk the make it a rich experience where you really taste the coffee beans without it getting bitter.
Sorry for my little weird analogy, but if you stumble upon one, just buy it you will not regret it.

Reviewed Feb 25th, 2018 by Tallguy

Previous to this I had a 702 and 3240PE. The 3140 sounds superior to both,beautiful sound stage and loads of power.
The build is more solid too,steel knobs,dual mono setup with twin transformers. Get one if you can :)