Now Naim surely……………

…….the time is ripe. I can recall a Naim advert in a glossy magazine in the late 80s/90s explaining that there were “000,000s of records out there now discover what’s on them” and the Aro was the answer. With the ongoing development and launch of new products and the continual resurgence in vinyl surely now is the moment to make the Solstice Aro variant available as a stand alone?!! :sunglasses:

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Well…the Solstice strangely did not fly off the shelves, you can still buy one at a dealer in the UK at least. I thought it sounded great. Probably not very encouraging for Naim?

From what I’ve read it would require major modification to fit TT’s like the LP12

Somehow I don’t think naim will be going there but I might be wrong

Anyway I’ll never part with my original ARO that’s for sure

True Gazza

Here in Australia the original price was $34.5k

Now discounted to $24.3k

You’d be rightly pi**ed off if purchased one at original price

As you said didn’t fly off the shelf

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I want to remember that it was they who wrote in the forum that they bought two Solstice to sell one in the future with a little profit…

Goodness - like betting on the share market :crazy_face:

Lindsay, it has to be a forlorn hope. But why don’t you get a secondhand Aro, made in sunny Salisbury, rather than a pale outsourced overweight imitation that really isn’t an Aro at all?

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Good luck on finding one of those - even Peter Swain has a long list of customers lining up

But yes right way to go

Then the stock market is probably safer, actually. At least in this case it seems…:thinking:

Indeed Bjorn :+1:

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The original Aro was discontinued because sales were vanishingly small, so there is no reason that would be different today. As you say, sales of Solstice weren’t exactly overwhelming.

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Good to see you back Nigel👍

Here is the ad in question for those who haven’t seen it:
ARO001small

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The Aro is a beautifully simple design, though putting on a record after a couple of glasses of wine gave me the willies. At least the Clearaudio one has a lift/lower device.

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I rarely had trouble cuing as I could brace my hand on the plinth (does that work on an LP12?), it’s getting the blighter off again at the end that was the more precarious.

Here’s a gratuitous picture.

Incidentally, with a Decca cartridge as pictured it only really worked on original mono records without vertical modulation and would jump out of the groove on a stereo disc, more often than was comfortable. A bit of extra weight at the head shell worked wonders, or as that’s a Townshend the damping trough completely tamed it, a bit too much in my opinion.

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Nigel apparently Roksan can provide an arm board for the Aro!

I had to check that I had not written that, as it mirrors my thoughts exactly.

Does anyone know why the new ARO is SO much heavier than the original? Where has the additional weight come from?

I imagine that one reason that sales of the original ARO were low was that the design looked so simple that potential buyers were put off, and plumped for an Ittok or Ekos instead.

I agree Nigel that’s why I installed the ARO Tiger Paw Arm Elevator on mine (as pictured ) as I’m prone to have a few drinks now and then

I believe Tiger Paw went belly up

Peter Swain of Cymbiosis (Leicester) has adapted a lift/lower device that can be retro-fitted to an ARO armboard or Keel.

Is it an Audio Technica design? (No doubt someone will confirm this - or correct me, if I have misremembered.)

On a point of detail, the ARO pictured in Bevo’s post has the old style ‘na’ logo in white on the headshell. This detailing was dropped on later versions. Was there a reason for this? (I do think that it looks rather ‘unfinished’ without it.)

Hi Graham,

I believe the “na” logo on the Aro went the way of the dodo once the new hemispherical logo appeared.