Aya

The Aya took ten years and a founder's stubbornness. Roy Gandy's team wanted a cabinet that did not cost what real-wood veneer had come to cost, and ended up casting one from glass-reinforced cement with a British firm that normally makes concrete furniture. The glass fibres keep the weight down while the cement kills resonance, and the result is a 2.5-way band-pass floorstander using three Rega-made drivers: the ZRR tweeter, the 5-inch MX-125 and a 7-inch RR7.8 bass unit. Expect tight bass and the Rega midrange. Every cabinet is slightly different — shading and small pinholes are part of casting cement, not faults. Grilles are an optional extra, deliberately.