Conqueror Mk4 Tonearm
There’s a reason it’s called “Conqueror.”
Well established as one of the world’s best tonearms, the Conqueror Mk4 from Britain’s Origin Live incorporates a host of mechanical and electrical improvements. Advances in the tube, headshell and counterweight bring tonearm resonance to an absolute minimum. Innovative Dual Pivot Bearings and classic falling weight side bias make for exceptionally smooth motion. Meticulous selection of wiring and contacts ensure the integrity of reproduction. The result is exceptionally even-handed presentation that sounds sublime across a wide range of music.
“Stunning… one of the very best tonearms yet made by anybody… Works brilliantly no matter what programme material you use or which partnering equipment. …Whatever you play, it just dissolves away…”
~ David Price, Hi-Fi World
Aircraft alloy/carbon fibre arm tube. Every tonearm needs to hold your cartridge steady, free from any extraneous resonance or reflected vibration. The Conqueror Mk4 succeeds brilliantly with a high-grade aircraft alloy tube further stiffened with carbon fibre.
Long rear stub sleeve. This maximizes energy dissipation and improves counterweight stability, further protecting the cartridge from resonance.
Meticulous counterweight attachment. While the counterweight attachment holds the arm tube firmly, it’s also decoupled to minimize energy reflection back down the tube, for clearly audible improvement.
Counterweight fine adjuster enables you to set highly precise tracking force.
Headshell features improved de-coupling and lightweight finger-lift.
Dual Pivot Bearings. Origin Live provides a high-specification bearing to control tonearm motion on the horizontal axis. But vertical motion confronts designers with a daunting set of choices. Uni-pivot bearings offer extremely low friction, along with excellent definition and transparency. But their relative instability degrades bass performance. They can also be fiddly to set up and wobbly to cue. Some uni-pivot arms can literally be “knocked off their bearing.” To achieve the sonic benefits without all these limitations, Origin Live uses a pair of precisely rounded, ultra-hard tungsten carbide points held by gravity in a pair of radiused burnished steel cups. This allows the arm a tiny degree of motion in every direction except down. Gravity self-centers the points, sliding them into the bottom of the cups. As a result, vertical tonearm motion is incredibly smooth, with vanishingly low friction. Music is open and transparent, achieving the superb definition of uni-pivot arms, but without sacrificing bass. In addition, the arm is extremely robust. You can even hold it upside-down and nothing will fall off.
Precise vertical tracking angle adjustment. A large, calibrated dial above the arm-board gives you easily-accessible, total control over VTA.
Azimuth Adjustment
Falling weight side bias. Compared to many other approaches, this classic anti-skate design reduces friction, reduces resonance and increases stability.
Internal Litz wire. Origin Live’s high-grade copper Litz wire is cryogenically frozen to reduce discontinuities in the conductors.
Silver-plated headshell clips. Slightly outperform gold.
Silver hybrid external cable. The supplied 1-metre cable uses silver, again because it slightly outperforms gold.
Rhodium-plated single point RCA plugs. Single point contact reduces eddy currents while Rhodium provides an ultra-smooth surface for reliable contact.