Origin Live Gravity One Record Stabilising Clamp

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Origin Live Gravity One Record Stabiliser

At last a Record Stabiliser which works as it should

Record stabilising clamps or weights serve 2 purposes

a) They flatten warped records on the platter - thus giving your cartridge an easier ride and enabling it to maintain the same VTA (angle to the record).

b) They change the way your records sound by damping their vibration.

Most stabilisers flatten records successfully but have very mixed results on sound quality. As a generalisation, most tend to enhance the bass whilst dulling down the upper midband. There is also a perceived slowing down of the sound and the decay of notes suffer.

For 25 years or so we’ve tested record stabilser designs (both ours and 3rd parties) and never come a stabiliser which was worthwhile to use. Then one year we were sharing a room at the indulgence show with the importer of Shun Mook and he introduced us to their record clamp. To my astonishment this actually worked and enhanced everything in the music with no downside. The only problem was that it cost £2000.

This experience got me thinking and after some interesting design experiences with previously untested materials we though it worth trying again. Strangely enough just as we came up with this idea my friend Tony Sharman started talking to us about a record stabiliser he designed for his own personal system. Anyone who knows Tony knows that he’s a no nonsense kind of guy and one of the more experienced in the industry. My interest was aroused and we duly arranged a date for him to come down and demonstrate his clamp.

As I’m sure you can guess this was an ah-ha! moment and his design coincided almost exactly with our own thinking but he had refined things and gave us some helpful tips to speed up the design.

What it Sounds Like...

The resulting record stabiliser makes a significant contribution to improving bass definition, weight and depth but it also enhances the midband and treble through better separation, transparency and decay of notes. This is where most other stabilisers cause degradation but the Origin Live stabiliser excels.

Possible objections answered:

My deck will be different to the one you tested the stabiliser on so there is there any guarantee of improvement?

This a valid concern, however the good thing about a record stabiliser is that it is in contact with the record rather than your deck. So although the deck will affect the vibration of the record to a large extent the effect of exerting control from the topside of the record is different to a large extent. To test this point we tried the stabiliser on: