Trying to close up the cartridge clips on my Aro to stay put on a Dynavector after using a Goldring I’ve managed to break one off.
Looks simple enough to stick it back on, albeit with a little shortening of the wire but was the solder still leaded in the last couple of years?
Product history as on the current website has the Aro running until 2006 but I think it went on a bit longer than that. I remember they overlapped the superline by a couple of years.
I do not know what they used in the original manufacture, but I always prefer a leaded solder compared to anything else. I get much better results and I think with electrical connections I think it’s better and lasts.
I was told it was leaded on the Aro when i asked naim in 2015
I believe the lead free directive was introduced in July 2006, so it would have been leaded solder when the Aro was in production.
Regards
Neil.
I bought my Aro about six months after my superline and though it was secondhand I remember them still being available new at the time. Mine was the personal arm of the manager of my local hifi shop. He said he replaced his Aro every year at trade and sold the old one on at a profit. Mine has a SN 2495## while my superline, which was from the first year of production, has a number 2591##.
Got a response from Naim support. Apparently my arm was post ROHS and used a lead free solder. It’s quite similar to the Weller SCN M1 I have to hand but for €19 I’ve ordered some that’s an exact match for the alloy, if not for the flux. Probably best not to name it as Naim have changed solders since, possibly more than once and anyone needing to make a repair would be best contacting them with their serial number.
So I can confirm Naim’s customer support is still going the extra mile.
Now all I have to do is the actual soldering.
I tried it on a resonance test track but couldn’t get it to wobble at any frequency, so much for testing Ortofon’s compliance claim.
Soldering was a bit tricky and I’d be glad not to have to do that again. I’d removed the heatshrink sleeve with the clip hut there was another tight sleeve the same colour as the insulation, the end of which I stripped only to find more insulation underneath if the same colour. my wire strippers aren’t fine enough so I tried a scalpel but was wary of just cutting right through wire. In the end I held the insulation with tweezers to try to limit heat spread and used the soldering iron tip to melt/char the plastic back from the wire finishing off with the scalpel as a scraper. I had to scrape the iron tip too before it would wet after that but the solder seemed to tin OK on the wire.
I’d used that particular tip only for lead and silver free Sn,Cu,Ni solder, the Naim stuff was similar but with a small addition.
With the slop in the holes and a P to S of 215.5mm you can get UNIDIN alignment with an SPU Royal on an Aro, so my Smartractor tells me.
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