Still live and kickin’…
By Roy Gregory
The UK isn’t exactly short of iconic turntable brands. From Linn and Garrard to Michell, Pink Triangle, Rega and Roksan, asked the question any audiophile has plenty of answers to choose from. But how many, I wonder, would mention Origin Live? Even now I can see the puzzled frowns rippling the foreheads: Origin Live? The name lacks the visibility and to some extent, the reputation of those ‘headline acts’, but don’t let that fool you. The LP12 might have become a constantly re-cycled (and increasingly expensive) parody of itself; the Garrard and Michell products are stuck in a time warp; the Roksan ‘tables are long gone while the Pink Triangle has transmogrified into the Funk Firm. Only Rega continues to plough its own, distinct and distinctly eclectic path… So why not Origin Live, a company with a history that not only extends beyond four decades, but one that continues to centre all of its activities around record replay? Its products and approach are just as ‘different’ and distinctive as those at Rega, but while they too include affordable, high-value record players, at the other end of the range their offerings are significantly more ambitious. Origin Live might not enjoy the profile and brand recognition of more ‘storied’ brands, but maybe that’s about to change.
The way we were…
Like so many audio stories, Origin Live started with one man tinkering to improve his system, playing with cable and speaker stands. That man was Mark Baker, a shipbuilder and naval architect by training and that first product was a well-regarded, triangular-framed, lightweight table for the LP12. It proved popular right up to the point where the infamous Mana tables became the ‘company approved’ and thus de facto choice of all right-thinking Linn/Naim owners – at that time, the dominant group in the UK market. Undeterred, Origin Live soldiered on, producing some of the first solid-core cables (perhaps inadvertently distancing themselves still further from the Linn/Naim hegemony), manufacturing innovative record mats, modifying the recently released Rega tonearms and supplying motor upgrades to a whole host of turntables (an activity that also provided quite a crash course in certain aspects of turntable design, as well as a list of dos and don’ts).
While mats, turntable and tonearm modifications are still core components in the Origin Live product portfolio, the company soon graduated to building its own tonearms and turntables. Currently it offers no fewer than six turntables, ranging from the Aurora at around £1,200, via the Swift, Calypso, Resolution, and Sovereign all the way up to the Voyager, which starts at £24,000 – depending on the options chosen. They can each be mated to one of nine different tonearms (ranging from the £480 Onyx to the £26,000 Renown). Obviously, you can also specify an armboard for any other arm too – more than one if you like, as every turntable in the line can accept at least two and in some cases three tonearms. But in many ways, the real story here is that each and every part is manufactured and finished (motors, plugs and plating aside) entirely in-house. Turntables and tonearms are a classic light-engineering, precision manufacturing product and that’s exactly what Origin Live does.
