Soloist, as the name implies, was intended for the performance of solo parts and should be placed on top of the main instrument. This concept conditioned the appearance of the instrument: the keys for switching presets are below the keyboard, and when the Soloist is positioned on top of another instrument, they are just below eye level.

The Soloist version was produced only for one year (from 1970 to 1971) and was replaced with the Pro Soloist version. With this in mind and the manual assembly used in those days, it can be assumed that no more than a thousand ARP Soloist copies were produced and it is almost impossible to meet a unit on the second hand market.

ARP Soloist is a semi modular system, the internal individual modules are pre-configured and do not have external connectors for control signals. The following modules were used:
4027 is a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) generating the sawtooth signal.
4012 - voltage controlled low-pass filter (LP VCF) has a four-stage structure with a slope of 24 dB per octave.
4030 is a complex filter for creating the "Violin" sound.
4031 - complex filter for creating "Cello".
4032 - "English Horn", "Oboe", "Banjo".
4033 - "Basson", "Elec. Bass "," Elec. Piano ".

Preset sounds have no settings and can only be processed by the "Brilliance" filter. Effects that function together with the aftertouch are also available: "pith bend", "vibrato", "wow" "growl", "brilliance" and "volume".

ARP Soloist can be heard in the works of Quincy Jones and Steely Dan. There is a legend that Steely Dan during the recording of Countdown to Ecstasy was so annoyed with the work of Soloist – with the tuning of the system (the weak point of many analog synthesizers) – that he threw the synthesizer from the top floor of the recording studio, and then burned it.