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A Dutch treat
Hotrod a CD player
By Simon Brown
March 2002
Double Dutch? Well, it’s quite simple really, Njoe Tjoeb 4000 translates straightforwardly from Dutch as New Tube 4000. It refers to a hot-rodded Marantz 4000 CD player made by the Dutch company AH! As the name implies the conversion significantly involves a valve output stage, but that’s only half the story. It also doesn’t give you any idea just how stunningly good this player is.
If a Dutch tubed, Japanese branded, Chinese made CD player sounds waaay too flaky, like something dreamed up in a Dutch coffee house (and I haven’t even mentioned buying it on the Internet yet) just bear with me for a paragraph...
I should say first in its defence that the Njoe Tjoeb 4000 is really boring, at least to look at and use. It looks and behaves exactly like a Marantz 4000. No buzzes, farts or hums, no need for obscure partnering gear and no weird turn on ritual (not even the occasional burnt offering to the Tube Gods).
The company is boring too. No interesting stories of equipment made by the Guru in the Garret. Despite their name AH! are seriously professional and established (with 4000+ units shipped of the previous Tjoeb 98 and 99 models).
If Holland doesn’t seem the most common source of hi-fi gear, it is significant that AH! are based in Eindhoven aka Philips City (Marantz having links to Phillips). AH! are clearly able to draw on a significant local network of electronic subcontractors. Certainly the quality of the circuit-board with it’s mix of ‘audio’ and surface mount components would put 90% the worlds ‘enthusiast’ companies to shame.
So I’m being way too hard on the standard Marantz CD4000, which after all is an elegant player with ergonomic controls (different size and shape for different functions) and has the same transport as a number of high-end players plus all the features you’d expect. But I wanted to head off objections before they were raised.
I found the Njoe Tjoeb 4000 out of necessity. My light in old CD players’ laser eyes had died, forcing me to look for a replacement. The prospect of most $1200 players didn’t excite me (let alone mortgage considerations). This is partly because I feel with CD players, doubling your money often gets you something that’s only slightly better. But I needed a player, now. Triggered by article in an English magazine, I looked at the AH! website.
I
found that that Njoe Tjoeb 4000 didn’t just come with a valve output
stage (using my favourite valve, the ECC88 ) but it had also had a host
of other improvements including:
- Super accurate crystal.
- Lots of independent power supplies regulators (including valve HT).
- Additional toroidal transformer.
- More capacitor storage than most Japanese power amps.
- Posh Burr-Brown Op-Amps (but you can plug-n-play)
- Components (Wima/Vishay caps etc) selected by listening panel.
- Replace transistor muting with a relay.
Okay, so what does all this do?
Sounds brilliant, that’s what. I was wowed straight after turning it on, sure it gets even better with running in, warming up and all that stuff (you’ve heard it all before, yawn, golden earwax).
But it’s a measure of the ability of this player that it’s profound music making ability shines through regardless of the situation. This is illustrated by the experience of hearing it as a source for the low-fi speakers in my kitchen. Even there, there was an effortless presentation of detail not previously heard.
It reminded me that there is some truth in the hi-fi school of thought that pushed the concept of the source component being the most important. The Njoe Tjoeb 4000 could form the basis of a very nice system even with the most basic (but okay!) amp and speakers.
In my ‘proper’ stereo system, the first impact is the lovely midrange, all you’d expect from valves, natural and easy. Suddenly here was serious competition for my analogue system. The individual strands of music are easy to follow, this is in part due to the detail retrieved but also having a good sense of timing, helps it to come together in a coherent way.
The top end shows good extension too, at first I kept on thinking I was hearing the doorbell but it was just stuff I hadn’t heard before. I’d been tempted to say that there was a hint of midrange dominance, but listening to it in a friends system, the bass is all there, extended and tight.
The only other grizzle is a suspicion that the tonal balance alters with changes of volume setting (via the remote control). AH! provide instructions on how to make a minor mod internally to alter the output level, which may help. But I personally would like instructions on bypassing the volume control.
This leads me to a final useful aspect of this player, that is, product support and upgrading. AH! already offer a number of options with the player (squishy feet, tube damping rings etc) and are promising more upgrades (posh AC cable, panel damping, etc). So it’s nice to buy something that can be improved with time. But the player is also eminently tweekable for the enthusiast (one of my workmates restrained himself for about three days before adding significant panel dampening).
What’s more, the Njoe Tjoeb 4000 only costs $1100 to $1600 depending on how you buy it. There is currently no New Zealand agent, so you can either buy it direct from AH! or their US agent, Upscale Audio. Two of my workmates bought their Njoe Tjoebs from the USA as it worked out cheaper for freight to New Zealand.
I happened to be visiting a Kiwi friend in Eindhoven so was able to pick mine up from AH!’s classy shop HiFi Winkel (who were good at refunding Euro-GST after I returned to NZ).
This did lead to my only negative experience in buying the Njoe Tjoeb. That was when I had to run madly through Paris carrying a boxed CD player (and bag) to catch the Eurostar to London, as the Paris Metro had broken down. Unlike the player, this is not recommended.
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