Reviews

"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!"
 David Price - Hi-Fi World 2003

"The apparent width of the perceived image was enormous, as the image was so large that my living room walls seemed to melt away. This was complemented with a precision of spatial characteristics that made listening to the Illustrious an absolute pleasure... moreover the extra dynamic range over all the other arms here was simply stunning....Along with firecracker dynamics, something SME users will know, it possessed a seamless rhythmic ease and flow which SME V users will not! This is a beautifully fluid listen, yet gives nothing away in terms of grip and focus...bringing almost all the fluidity of the best unipivot with vastly improved grip and incision - the best of both worlds, if you like.

and the winner is... the Origin Live Illustrious, a pick up arm that is quite simply breathtaking. It's ability to display a three dimensional stereo image is above critisism, as is it's transparency and lack of artifice. It also has amazing tonal accuracy, which lets the "flavour" of each instrument or voice flood out of the speakers. This is the respect in which it is most obviously superior to the SME.... on any deck ... this is surely the best.
Albert Lee - Hi-Fi World 2004 Group comparison test of 7 tonearms

Won Stereo Times "most wanted component of the year Award 2004" in combination with the Resolution Turntable

Feature highlights

Arm tube:
High ridgidity accounts for tight, powerful and completely natural bass.

Yoke and arm base:
These house a revolutionary design to decouple the bearings and thus isolate the armtube.
The yoke offers high inertia in the horizontal plane for cartridge stability but minimizes inertia in the vertical plane to enable excellent tracking.

Highly specified bearings improve on the already amazing level of tonal and sound-staging of the Encounter arm.

Headshell:
Holographic images of headshells taken during record playing reveal that most headshells flex and twist significantly. To prevent this microscopic twisting the Illustrious headshell is machined from a solid block of high strength alloy incorporating side flanges.

Michell TecnoArm "If your musical priorities are excellent control of both frequency extremes, without analytical sterility, the TecnoArm is more than good enough, especially with its combination of accurate but powerful bass. If low coloration and evenhanded tonality is your priority, the arrival of the Michell TecnoArm means you no longer have to save for a SME series IV or SME V". Mark Wheeler www.tnt-audio.com	Origin Live Silver "the Silver is...the very best tonearm I've ever heard…awsomely tight bottom end...the midband - glass clear, incredibly liquid, fantastic image precision, walkaround soundstaging and incredible timbral realism...the treble is shockingly open and airy up top...the £599 price tag is laughably low...could probably charge 5 times this amount...words can’t express how good this is - one of the designs of the decade." Hi-Fi World, March 2002
SME Series V Series V sound has an almost startling dynamic range and neutrality enabling high levels to be enjoyed. It escapes the 'LP' sound and demonstrates that structural resonances in pick-up arms are responsible for much that makes vinyl records readily discernible from master tapes.	Origin Live Illustrious mk2 and the winner is... the Origin Live Illustrious, a pick up arm that is quite simply breathtaking. It's ability to display a three dimensional stereo image is above critisism, as is it's transparency and lack of artifice. It also has amazing tonal accuracy, which lets the "flavour" of each instrument or voice flood out of the speakers. This is the respect in which it is most obviously superior to the SME.... on any deck ... this is surely the best. Albert Lee - Hi-Fi World 2004 Group comparison test of 7 tonearms
Brinkmann 10.5 "This arm bears a striking resemblance to that once made by Breuer of Switzerland, right down to the restrictively shaped headshell." - HiFi + extract	Origin Live Enterprise This arm is packed with radical new thinking and technological advances, to significantly elevate toneram performance beyond anything that has gone before. Rather than list the features of this arm, we invite those who want to experience ultimate performance to simply listen. The most obvious aspects of this arm are it's sheer speed and realism that is approaching live music. The tightness and depth of bass is a revelation and will expose you to your records in a totaly new light