Origin Live Resolution Turntable & Illustrious Arm (Hi-Fi+ 73)

Origin Live started out as a hot-rodder of tonearms, a business it still engages in to this day. But, somewhere down the line, Mark Baker hit the end-stops of what he could do to the Rega arms he was tweaking and he started building his own. The natural progression was to turntables. The system we’re looking at today is the second-top turntable – the Resolution Mk 2 – mated to the third-place Illustrious Mk 3C tonearm. There’s a distinct ships-of-the-line nomenclature to Origin Live products; Sovereign, Conqueror, Encounter, Enterprise, Aurora, Calypso… it wouldn’t surprise me to see an Ark Royal 12” tonearm soon.

The Resolution is an exercise in acrylic and chrome, a circular plinth with two circular front risers, a rear riser for the tonearm and a separate motor housing. This uses the DC200 DC motor in its own acrylic block. Speed is controlled from a switch in the motor block, and two speed control screws on the side of the pod sit next to the power supply inlet. A plugtop PSU comes with the motor as standard. You do need to be careful to ensure the pod does not touch the plinth and is just the right distance from the rest of the deck, and some experimentation is in order to ensure the speed is stable and the belt isn’t wobbling or too taut. Origin Live recommends setting the speed with the pulley 212mm from the spindle.

The deck features an acrylic platter, with a standard bearing, which rests on a subchassis that itself sits on an inertia disc. The subchassis and disc are already fitted to the deck, you just add the correct amount of oil into the bearing housing, fit your platter and arm and you are away. The deck itself sits on three adjustable feet, two metal and one plastic, which must be clear of the plinth before you play.

The Illustrious arm shows itself as a distant cousin many times removed from the Rega arms Mark Baker cut his teeth on. It uses the traditional Rega arm base and geometry that was seen in the likes of the RB250 and RB300, and the headshell looks similar too. Everywhere else, it has as much in common with Rega designs as humans have with bananas; probably less, as we share 50% of our DNA with bananas. Externally at least, the combination of chrome and high-gloss black makes the arm distinctive. But look closer and you’ll see the real gems. The headshell is a high-grade alloy, to prevent flexion and torsion over time. The armtube is a carbon-fibre composite. Then there’s the yoke, and the bearings within. This yoke is designed to increase inertia in the vertical plane (to keep the cartridge stable) but minimise inertia in the horizontal to allow better cartridge tracking. It can do that because it uses a high-spec multiple bearing assembly. Horizontal movement is covered by the arm’s conventional gimbaled bearings, while vertical movement is handled by the dual pivot design. This last behaves like a pair of point-in-cup unipivots, either side of the wide yoke. The arm comes supplied with a set of transit screws, to free up the dual pivots, and a set of Linear Flow 2 tonearm leads.

The upshot of this in terms of feel is an arm that behaves like a conventional bearing in set-up, use and bass performance, with the transparency and detail of a unipivot. In practice, the small amount of play in the yoke that might petrify any passing SME V owner, but is a deliberate aspect of the product design. On the subject of SME arms, the overall fit and finish of the Illustrious is not in the same league as the Steyning arm… but you could say the same of about almost any non-SME arm. It’s not got the ‘wow’ factor of a Graham Phantom but neither does it have the tractor-chic of a Kuzma Stogi.

If your idea of constructing a turntable package is taking it out of the box, look elsewhere; some building is required, especially when it comes to the arm. A whole tool kit of parts are supplied and it seems the ‘one bolt fits all’ approach is not in effect here. But, in fairness, the deck’s a doddle to build and there’s no need to call for an engineer unless you are truly ham-fisted.

Once you have a working deck and arm (and have fitted an appropriate cartridge – we used the excellent Cartridgeman Music Maker Classic moving iron design to keep things suitably British and slightly left field, and also to challenge the high effective mass of the arm), you need to give the deck a good three days running in before it starts to perform properly. This seems to let the speed control stabilize, perhaps due to the bearing lubricating itself, the DC motor settling down and stopping hunting or a combination of these things. However, after about 48 hours, the deck suddenly becomes one of the least tweaky products out there and merely plays music at 33 or 45, quickly, accurately and without fuss. Being a deck without a suspension, it does rely on the support of a good table or wall-shelf, but the usual ‘light, rigid and not prone to footfall’ will suffice. Those who cannot live without some kind of adjustment are not left wanting though; there’s always the special mat and an upgraded transformer for £195. Aside from playing around with tightening the arm mounting, that’s it.