Origin Live Illustrious Tonearm

Description

Origin Live Illustrious Tonearm

This tonearm sounds astonishing, compared to Origin Live arms further down the range, and its commercial rivals. The ground-breaking design and meticulous attention to detail result most noticeably in an improvement of bass performance. However as always, when you go higher in the Origin Live range, every other aspect improves, notably definition, deep powerful bass, transparency and dynamics.

The result is a tonearm that has been widely acclaimed as a performance benchmark. Both reviewers and enthusiasts love the Illustrious for its outstanding bass power, superb dynamics and consummate musicality. It has supreme transparency too, allowing the finest cartridges to be used. Few designs better this brilliant device.

Features

Origin Live Illustrious Tonearm

The Illustrious Tonearm offers cutting-edge design features to enhance musical performance with superior clarity and detail.

Features

Higher Strength Arm Tube

The high-grade aircraft alloy tube is reinforced using a long rear stub sleeve, carefully interfaced to provide maximum energy dissipation and minimal reflections. This frees up your cartridge to perform as it should, away from the colouration and disruption caused by resonance and reflected vibration.

A Sleeved Rear-Stub

With larger diameter, higher strength, and improved energy dissipation, this enhances counterweight stability in vibration, enabling the arm tube to hold the cartridge more steadily.

A Rigidly Attached Counterweight

The counterweight attachment is engineered to hold the arm tube more rigidly for cartridge stability while decoupling itself to minimize energy reflection back down the tube.

Counterweight Fine Adjuster

The Origin Live Illustrious High-End Tonearm allows you to easily set the tracking force with a high degree of accuracy.

Headshell

Features improved de-coupling and a lightweight finger-lift.

Dual Pivot Bearings

For vertical arm movement, the bearings consist of ultra-hard tungsten carbide points sitting in hardened and burnished steel cups. This combination delivers incredibly low friction levels and is more robust than jeweled bearings, providing exceptional transparency, fluidity, and fine detail retrieval.

Precise & Accessible VTA Adjuster

VTA can be adjusted precisely and infinitely using a large diameter calibrated dial. All adjustments can be carried out above the arm-board, unlike lower arms in the range which require access below the arm-board.

Azimuth Adjustment

Allows for precise alignment adjustments to optimize performance.

Falling Weight Side Bias

Tests show this to be the highest performing method of achieving side bias, offering lower friction, better constant force, and lower resonance compared to alternatives such as magnets, springs, levers, and twisted threads.

Internal Wiring

High-grade copper Litz wire, cryogenically frozen to reduce discontinuities in the conductors. This wire provides great transparency, de

Build Quality

In the same way, great singers have better voices, all materials resonate differently and have a “voice” in micro-vibration. There is an argument that says the ideal material is totally dead, but this oversimplification ignores the fact that to absorb energy, the material has to vibrate. The argument also omits to consider that if a material is too soft (like a sponge to take an extreme example) then it will lack rigidity. Conversely, if a material is too hard then it reflects energy which is disastrous. Because all these factors conflict with one another it renders correct material choice much more complex than many imagine.

The nature of mechanical playback means that every material chosen plays a role in performance. Specifications and theory can only play a limited role here. If pure measurements were the answer, you could use a computer to judge the talent of singers on shows like the Voice or the X-factor. The problem is that any measurement system can only measure what it’s programmed to. Understanding the physics of what makes one voice more preferable to another would probably take more than a lifetime. For this reason, we conduct hundreds of listening tests to determine the best choices.

Origin Live pay obsessive attention to the types of material used throughout the construction of turntables. This is one reason our Platter Mat (offered as an accessory) upgrades 99% of turntables on the market. The same is true for our turntable belts and oil, both of which receive remarkable reviews from satisfied clients. These may seem trivial examples but they indicate a fanatical thoroughness in research that extends to much more important areas in our turntables.

Intensive Research and Innovative Thinking

The design of our tonearms is the key to their performance. Over 25 years of continuous development has gone into these arms. However, it’s the “outside the box” thinking, which make them special. Origin Live arms are extremely innovative, not only in concept but also in the choice of superior build materials. Wherever possible high-grade alloys are included. These alloys are expensive to machine and finish but the results are so worthwhile in terms of performance.

Most arms look great on the outside so it is easy to miss the massive hidden differences. With an Origin Live arm, you can be sure that it’s not just a matter of high-grade components but far more importantly, you have a design that really delivers in terms of performance.

REVIEWS FOR The Origin Live Illustrious Tonearm

“The best tonearm I’ve heard to date… brilliantly detailed yet utterly musical, this arm is set to join the ranks of the all-time greats. Wholeheartedly recommended.”
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David Price, Hi Fi World

“The winner is the Origin Live Illustrious, a pick-up arm that is quite simply breathtaking…”
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Albert Lee, Hi-Fi World

“The Origin Live Calypso Mk4 with Illustrious tonearm is flabbergastingly good! Tonally neutral, it has absolutely no coldness or hardness or any other sonic clue that can sometimes be attributed to a technically extremely well-executed reproduction.”
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Hi-Fi Advice, Christian Punter

“Combining the sonic virtues of both unipivot and gimballed bearings in a fuss-free package, it should work exceedingly well with a wide variety of cartridges and turntables. It is certainly the best all-around tonearm I’ve ever had in my own system. Highly recommended!”
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Bruce Kinch, Positive Feedback