Naim is releasing its first turntable – Solstice Special Edition turntable

If you love the organic authenticity of vinyl, you can now finally enjoy it with the musical purity and passion only a Naim system can deliver.

British audio specialist Naim unveiled the a truly high-end device – Naim Solstice Special Edition turntable.

Naim Audio has designed and handcrafted music systems in the historic English city of Salisbury for almost 50 years. Just outside the city lies the World Heritage site of Stonehenge, its Neolithic standing stones perfectly framing the movements of the sun. The British audio specialist didn’t need to look far for naming inspiration for this very Special Edition turntable, nor did the company need to deviate from its own heritage: although Solstice is Naim’s first turntable, the brand’s experts have been venerating vinyl since the genesis of Naim in the late 1960s.

Solstice Special Edition turntable

Limited to just 500 units, this Special Edition includes the Solstice turntable, a next-generation version of the iconic Naim Aro tonearm, an Equinox MC cartridge, Solstice Series Phono Stage, Power Supply and bespoke accessories set. The Solstice turntable combines core Naim design philosophies, such as multiple levels of mechanical decoupling, with a celebration of beautiful materials. It features a magnetic bearing supporting a high-mass, highly polished aluminium platter, with a unique, self-calibrating motor drive system, meticulously delivering the Naim sound.

The Special Edition package also includes a commemorative book, plus the Naim Records True Stereo album – a curated collection of superb-quality True Stereo recordings, newly remastered for vinyl.

“Our founder, Julian Vereker often considered a Naim-designed turntable. Tragically, he never realised his plans before his untimely death in 2000. However, his legacy lives on with this project and the team behind Solstice Special Edition.. Naim products aim to be both timeless and contemporary. Our designs eschew unnecessary visual adornment that do not serve performance goals. Solstice Special Edition design is functionally coherent, encourages use, sharp – almost brutalist – and wears its innovative materials and design solutions with pride.” – Naim Audio.

From then to now

Even after the arrival of CD in the 1980s, Naim continued to champion vinyl, producing the iconic ARO tone arm in 1989. Aro has always set a benchmark in terms of delivering incredibly natural, organic and lifelike musical performances. Its design allows the cartridge to extract enormous amounts of the information from the grooves of a vinyl record, but with an incredible sense of flow and correctness to the resulting sound.

Engineered with Swiss-watch precision

The Equinox cartridge’s Moving Coil (MC) inner assembly sits in a solid aluminium housing machined from a single billet. A raked silver polished chamfer passes over the black cartridge edges, simultaneously communicating the unseen facets of the diamond stylus and giving a nod to heritage Naim ‘chrome bumper’ designs.

High quality materials for improved performance

Updating Aro for Solstice Special Edition involved retaining the original’s design principles and excellence, but boosting performance further still by using improved materials – including tungsten and carbon-fibre – and adding an all-new, no compromise bias, arm height and azimuth adjustments.

Led by its Technical Director (Electronics), Steve Sells, Naim’s expert engineers designed simple but elegant circuits, fed by Naim’s acclaimed high-performance DR tech, which provides the smooth, stable power supply that’s vital for next-level performance. The production technicians then take premium components and fanatically measure, select and match them for ultimate accuracy.

Naim Solstice Special Edition turntable will be priced at $20,000.