My choice of the Fuuga was no accident. It’s heavy, it’s very low compliance and it has a body that’s specifically built to transfer energy into the tonearm – to the same prodigious extent that it generates musical energy. If any cartridge is going to challenge Origin Live’s approach to tonearm design, with its cascade of dispersive junctions, then this is it. Just listening to the sheer stability of the soundstage, the solid images and their unwavering locations in space, it’s clear that the cartridge is more than happy with the situation. The Fuuga is always a sumptuously smooth and fluid performer. But the secure confidence it exudes when mounted in the Origine Live tonearm takes its musical presence and purpose to a new level. It simply sounds more stable in and connected to the groove.
Playing the Cure’s seminal Seventeen Seconds (Fiction FIX 004) the crisp slap of the drums propels the music forwards with an irresistibly catchy drive and momentum. ‘A Forest’ has just the right, edge of you seat, quality, the opening pause to ‘M’ builds beautifully, exponentially, to the explosion of energy that signals the track proper. There’s a real sense of unimpeded flow, no hesitation in the rhythmic or dynamic response, no slurring or dissipation of musical energy. It doesn’t matter whether you are playing syncopated jazz rhythms, the cascading drum patterns behind ‘Little Triggers’ or the complex pauses and changes of pace that you’ll find across Vampire Weekend’s Father Of The Bride, the Enterprise provides a secure footing and solid platform for the cartridge, that lends an unequivocal clarity to rhythmic and dynamic shadings.
But for all the excitement it generates, the Fuuga/Enterprise combination does have a failing: it can’t match the precision and dynamic response that it brings to the leading edge of notes at the end of their envelope. Each note’s centre of gravity leans subtly forward, reinforcing the rise time and leading-edge attack, but at the expense of a fully developed harmonic tail. You hear it in the lack of texture on Kremer’s violin, on the diminished layers and complexity on Vikingur Ólafsson’s piano (Continuum DGG 486 6090). Which brings us to the question of the Cartridge Enabler – the neat, flexible mounting option that Origin Live supply with their tonearms.
To Enabler – or not…
Origin Live’s decoupled cartridge mount is far from the first I’ve come across, but it is by far the simplest and most elegant. A soft ‘mat’, trimmed to roughly the shape of a traditional cartridge body, is slipped between the top of the cartridge and the underside of the headshell/mounting platform. A small washer of the same material, topped with a second, nylon washer spaces the fixing bolts and ensures that they don’t bypass the decoupling. It is a universal and low impact solution that uses the existing mounting hardware, eliminating fiddling with nuts, above and below the cartridge/mounting. It adds little to the overall height of the cartridge installation and limits the variability in terms of azimuth and VTA that negatively impacts the consistency of other, floppier arrangements.
