I got my hands on an old Aristarco grinder, off ebay because up here there's little alternative. Over the past month or so I've tried to discern the lines between the extended Mazzer family with some conflicting information but here's a photo of the Aristarco, an EMA-75 I think:

Note, The body is more squared than an SJ, the hopper is larger and the front feet on all the Aristarco models stick out a bit.

From various websites, It clearly has a 64 mm burset, but also noticed that at one vendor, the burrs for this machine are listed as 64mm x 37 x 8.5, which is the burr set used on the Aristarco SE/N, EMA 85 and this grinder. When compared to a Mazzer SJ (to which the SE/N has been compared and is strikingly similar), the burrs for the Mazzer SJ is listed as a 64mm x 37 x 8.4. What does the 8.4 refer to? Is it pitch or nominal outside thickness?

Furthermore, on an Australian (i.e 50 hz) website, the aristarco is listed as a 380W, 1400 rpm machine. On a german website, the Aristarco EMA 75 is described as an early-model Mazzer SJ, but I'm not totally sure about this. Aristarco these days makes commercial dishwashers and from the looks of their website, that's all they admit to ever having made. However, I also had a look at the Aristarco SE/N:


The SE/N seems like a pretty close variant on a Super Jolly but still, the front feet and two-window doser are purely Aristarco. I'm guessing these might all be pretty early Mazzer SJ variants, but the EMA-75 actually has stepped adjustment (which can apparently be removed with a teflon tape mod, simply to prevent unintentional adjustment due to operating vibration).

Any further hints might be good. I know there are some Rio/Mazzer comparisons here too but not a great deal on EMA-75. I'll post photos for a first look and of course for the rebuild, I definitely budgeted for new burrs and if the body is aluminum like the Mazzer SJ it'll be a tough decision between polished aluminum and a new paintjob...

Aristarco was an independent grinder manufacturer (they have gotten out of the business apparently). Every grinder manufacturer makes a 64mm flat burr grinder, since this is the bread and butter grinder category for cafes.

I gave up on google searches because there seem to be lots of urban legends out there about Aristarcos in general. Actually, I emailed Mazzer and received a very prompt response from Luca Maccatrozzo, their export director (I'm totally happy to pass this email on if anybody wants it). His statement:

"We have never supplied grinders to Aristarco"

So that's that. There's definitely a misconception out there (perpetuated at least in part on Kaffee-Netz by some users - not the administrators) about Aristarco grinders being part of the Mazzer stable but the differences between the Aristarcos and Mazzers are more significant than those between, say, a Rio and a Mazzer. Although the Rios can be larger than their counterparts, the Aristarcos don't share the body, nor do they share similarities in the dosers and in parts diagrams the motors, mounts and burr carriers are also appear different from any of the Mazzer family of grinders.

Once I get the Aristarco I'll do a rebuild thread and hopefully add to the body of knowledge about the grinders because at least from their specs they might not be half-bad as grinders. I'm actually pretty curious about the North American specs for the grinder. For a dirty comparison, Mazzer's American SJ is a 1600 rpm, 350W machine while the Aristarco for Europe/Australia is specified as 1400 rpm and 380W (so maybe the American version might even be equipped with a similarly rated motor). For North America they would have fit a different motor but who knows, something around the same power and rpm would have been used so it might do a reasonable job.