Home brew titanium ARO

Well done to the OP, for this (close) 'replica' Naim Aro. I wonder how close it can be, to the original design - ??  I assume no Naim drawings were involved - ?

Making more, in any quantity is unlikely to be viable, in my view - or would be extremely expensive. I wonder how many hours of machining and assembly time the OP put into, to this one....? Plus time for design and sourcing parts. The numbers are against anything like this, unfortunately. Sales of around 1 unit per month, would not encourage many to try. 

Richard Dane posted:

For many years it had been one person building the Aro - Clive - and he was brilliant at it, knew it back to front, and so consistency was really good from arm to arm. It would take a long time for someone new to get as good. So I guess that with his retirement it seemed like the right time to stop Aro production. 

As for this homage to the Aro, I think it looks fab and hopefully sounds good too. However, please could members be mindful of forum rules and also respect that it is still Naims design. Any potential commercial discussion is not on. Thanks. 

I thought Clive was working at HQ until recently on and off/part time?  And, it's his retirement now I guess, that has resulted in the loss of factory service support for the Aro.

Can you please clarify for us Richard.

BTW. Great work there MarkyLeo and the rest of us Aro owners will be playing on into 2017 and beyond for sure.

Kind regards.

Peter

Wow! Just sold a lovely lp12 with aro,do l regret it?l regretted it as soon as it went out the door,mug.

Bob green posted:

Wow! Just sold a lovely lp12 with aro,do l regret it?l regretted it as soon as it went out the door,mug.

Oh dear! Whatever possessed you?!

... it's a wonderful recreation. The humorous amongst us might ask if you recreated the limitations too! IIRC the ARO was always rather more expensive than the Ekos - presumably because Naim were contracting-out machining whereas Linn were doing it in-house.

Not sure what the limitations are perceived to be. My recollection of Ekos/Aro pricing was about unity 25 years ago. Having thought through the machining of the components I would say the unipivot is the simpler to fabricate. The most challenging for a completely manual machining was the head, but any commercial shop would have do all the parts using CNC. The actual sapphire bearing cup is as far as I know the same one that Naim used, which is set in a stub which sits in a bearing arrangement rather like a minatutre turntable bearing.

... at the time, only Linn cartridges were considered for the ARO. Of these the Troika was the most famous of a rather 'coloured' range. Not sure how it compares to more recent designs like the Krystal. Your choice of different (more suitable?) materials will likely change the sound somewhat - but you may well have produced something superior. I always wondered about the flimsy finger lift and guessed that this might be the cause of a little extra brightness compared to the Ekos. I can't really see Naim reintroducing the ARO - because it's essentially an mechanically engineered product - though there could well be interest in a modern unipivot as an alternative to the more common gimbal bearing arms. 

just wanted to say that this is the coolest thing i've seen on an audio forum in many moons.

i have an sme 20/2a turntable, with sme5 tonearm and kiseki blue ns cartridge. I project to sell it, but maybe i am doing a big error.  My nds/555 dr/unitserve gives me a lot of satisfaction....but sometimes i put an lp on my sme, but not so often.

Hungryhalibut posted:

OK. It was still selling but in insufficient quantities to justify restocking - I heard less than one a month. The idea of making arms from arrow shafts is rather lovely. I loved mine, on an Armageddoned LP12 it was super, though scary to use after too much wine. 

In (about) 2004 Doug Graham told me they sold about 10 a month worldwide. There was one technician who knew how to make them and he prepared a batch every so often when he had a spare moment. 

I had mine refurbished at the factory late last year so if service support has now ended it has done so only recently. I did hear that some components (such as the plug) were no longer available.

My favourite piece of Naim kit. 

Well, it appears that the OP has reproduced said plug and in cool titanium to boot !! Perhaps he could just knock out a couple hundred metal plugs and keep us all safe from future failures- I'd buy a couple in a heartbeat !

Not sure how close the RS plug and socket is to the original. The cap is only aluminium and I recall now that I had to modify the snap-lock latch between plug and socket, which I felt was too tight when trying to unplug from the sprung arm board. Is there any latch on the original?

Marky Mark posted:

 

By successfully decoupling the arm from the rest of the turntable perhaps the original Aro's bearing / pillar assembly negated the need for the LP12 parts sold by Linn and others to stiffen the chassis etc?

Several owners here with Keels would disagree that I'm sure. I'm sure you can imagine what I think too... Have to respect moderation rules here

dektop100 posted:

 I can't really see Naim reintroducing the ARO - because it's essentially an mechanically engineered product - though there could well be interest in a modern unipivot as an alternative to the more common gimbal bearing arms. 

Could well be............................. Interest is substantial Uni-pivot designs are selling beyond expectation and not just the low cost ones (like the one who's name is an anagram of Naim).

I still hope, even when hope is lost apparently.

KR

Peter

PS. BBC News today - Vinyl sales at 25 year high. Nothing like the numbers for downloads of course, but so what! 

Markleo,

Absolutely amazing piece of dedicated work.

As others have remarked the need for compatible plugs and sockets seems to be the main MOT failure for ARO's at the moment.

Naim haven't so much thrown in the towel as abdicated all responsibility and conveniently lost threads referring to this lack of customer support.

My removed or "lost" December 2016 post relating to the unannounced retraction of all service requests on the Naim ARO has yet to be addressed by Naim, although I now understand that a few of the souls who undertook to help have been retired since November last.

If Naim won't support Naim users then perhaps the very least they and the Moderators could do would be to point customers in the right direction.

Third party support for users can't hurt Naim anymore than the self harm they are doing anyway.

In actual fact, Naim have no patent protection on the ARO design or drawings, have no stated intention to reuse the design or provide reasonable service levels and support, so as I see it, it's open season.

Any like minded individuals out there who want to help the old girl into the next decade?

Sharpen your pencils and get posting please

Thanks

Gerald