Also in the box you’ll find a two-point Lofgren A protractor, printed on plastic rather than card, as well as one of those Ortofon see-saw cartridge balances: good enough to get you started, but with so many affordable and effective electronic balances now available, you should really use something better.
Finally, there’s a small envelope containing an Origin Live Cartridge Enabler, a thin decoupling layer and washers that sit between the cartridge, the mounting bolts and the headshell. Using a lossy or flexible interface for cartridges isn’t new, but (perhaps not surprisingly) the OL solution is both thoroughly thought through and extremely cost effective. I’ll report on the performance of the arm both with and without the Enabler…
Adjustability
The Enterprise allows adjustment of all the geometrical parameters that affect cartridge alignment. Overhang and VTA have already been covered, but azimuth adjustment is worth further discussion. The wide stance of the bearing yoke spaces the two, downward facing needle points wide apart. Their vertical alignment and threaded mounting means that by adjusting them in the yoke, you can tilt the headshell. The points and their posts are locked in place by grub screws mounted through the rear face of the bearing yoke. Adjustment procedure involves loosening the lefthand grub screw only (viewed from behind) and then using a small allen key you can adjust that point through the hole in the top of the bearing yoke. The wide spacing makes for extremely precise and gradual adjustment, allowing you to really dial in azimuth – to considerable musical benefit. Long the forgotten parameter in cartridge set up, at least in the UK, correct azimuth can be achieved using various tools, like the Fozgometer, but frankly, the benefits are obvious enough and the Enterprise offers repeatable enough adjustment, that setting by ear is simplicity itself. If you haven’t done it before, don’t be worried if:
You are making adjustments and nothing is happening: keep going – musically speaking, azimuth tends to lock in all of a sudden.
Your cartridge body is no longer parallel to the record surface. That’s kind of the point – and very few stylus tips are perfectly perpendicular to the body they’re mounted in.
Although the effective mass of the tonearm is fixed, OL also offer 2.5g, 5g or 10g auxiliary headshell weights should it prove necessary to tune the arm/cartridge resonance. I ran Lyra, Xquisite and Fuuga cartridges, which pretty much cover the weight spectrum (short of crystal-bodied monsters) all without problems.
Overall, installation, set-up and alignment were a breeze, the only thing missing being on-the-fly VTA adjustment – and that ain’t on the menu. In what’s in danger of becoming a theme – although I suspect the similarities exist with good reason and result from similar concerns and a similar developmental process/path – the Origin Live Enterprise is one of the very few arms that can match the Kuzma 4Point in terms of the ease and practicality of its use: praise indeed. It also looks extremely handsome, the distinctive wide shoulders of the bearing yoke adding to a confident and polished appearanceAll told, there’s a lot more to this arm than meets the eye – hence this separate, technical description. That also adds up to a lot of adjustments, options and a lot of listening. Let the games begin…
