The review below was kindly contributed by Nipper Varney and covers his Origin Live DC100 motor kit. Besides the few editor’s notes, what follows is Nipper’s content unedited. Take it away, Nipper!
ORIGIN LIVE DC100 MOTOR KIT (OPTION 3) & BELT. Full disclosure – I was recommended this kit on a FB group by David Baker before he identified himself as “Mr Origin Live”. It was outwith my budget and so I negotiated a small discount on the promise of this review. Out of respect to you, dear reader, I will not let that affect this opinion. It was purchased prior to review.
First the belt – at £35 it is more expensive than eBay examples – but it feels much better quality. It is thicker, so hopefully is less prone to stretching. It is also of a different material and has a grippier surface, therefore potentially requiring less tension which puts less side force on both the motor and platter shaft. This has the advantage of creating less wear on the motor and shaft and also transferring less vibration from the motor to the sub platter.
It was only after getting out my credit card – the motor kit is £530 (option 2 is £400) – that I researched user experience of the DC100 kit. Caveat emptor. Opinions on the web are mixed with roughly 50% thinking it’s great and 50% unhappy re noise and speed fluctuation. A number of folk considered it expensive, as I had, and found cheaper solutions. I suspect that this kit, which has been around a good while, has evolved and motor suppliers changed, so there is a possibility things have improved since the unhappy social media posts. Fingers crossed!
Editor’s note: I’m in the latter camp. Having seen at least three examples of these kits in use, I wouldn’t recommend them due to poor build quality, poor performance, obvious cost-cutting and the outlandish price.
Unpacking I found the transformer to be more substantial than the impression I got from the website photo. The Speed-box is fairly light and small (110mm x 180mm x 50mm – size not on website). It is of similar construction to the Classic Audio phonostages, but not to the same quality. The front panel on even the £150 Spartan 5, for example, is 5mm thick with bevelled edges and flush screw heads. The O.L. Speed-box front panel is only around 1mm thick with square edges and proud screw heads. Furthermore The Spartan has its switches and connections front and back labelled, as one would expect, whereas there is no labelling on the Origin Live. I have had to put masking tape on the back to handwrite which is the 33 speed adjuster and which the 45, and the direction to turn. I found the adjusters too small and fiddly. I am surprised at the cost-cutting basic finish of a top-dollar retail price unit from a well established premium brand and that it doesn’t compare well with a new start one-man band keenly priced product.
The motor is bought in by O.L. but there is nothing on it to identify supplier. What’s more is there is nothing on the website, transformer, Speed-box or motor to state the voltage. Only in the installation instructions is there mention of 8V. The top fixing plate, which I assume is O.L. made, is a good design. On one side are three holes and the other a slot. These allow the motor position to be adjusted from a fixed point on the turntable. There is vibration absorbing cork between motor and top plate.
Editor’s note: I believed the motor supplied with the DC100 was a Maxon 110191, 48V DC motor. However this was confirmed as incorrect by David from OL in his comment below. David states the motor is made specifically to OL’s specifications, though does not say on which motor it is based or whether it is a ground-up design. I apologise for the incorrect information.
Time to check out owner stated concerns. These are well known to O.L. and much of the installation instructions addresses them. Apparently the motor needs run in for the noise to subside, but even O.L. acknowledge their DC motor isn’t as quiet as many AC motors. I turn the motor on and it buzzes like a buzzy thing. Sitting on foam I can just about hear it from a few meters away, but rest it on something firmer, like the Speed-box and the top plate rattles are clearly audible from the other side of the room. It would be an unfair exaggeration to compare it to a marital aid but… And so I leave it to run for 24 hours prior to fitting.
I am installing it into my old Systemdek IIX and doing so is relatively simple. The motor top plate doesn’t screw into the deck itself, but into the deck’s metal bracket the existing motor is attached to. The two holes that the bolts holding the existing motor use line up with the aforementioned choice of hole and slot of the DC100 motor top plate. So it is a simple job of unbolting the old motor and bolting in the new one. Except the new DC100 motor has 3 screws sticking out the top and these are too far apart to fit within the large central hole on the deck’s metal bracket, which I have to file larger to accommodate them (this won’t prevent the old motor being refitted if needs be). It would have been nice for O.L. to supply new bolts, but they didn’t.
No matter, I use the existing, much longer than needed bolts and line up the motor spindle with exactly where the other one was. This wasn’t very smart of me as the new spindle pulley is much smaller than the original one, making the belt looser. A smaller diameter pulley has the advantage of maintaining a more stable platter speed with motor speed variation but the disadvantage of less contact with belt surface meaning the belt will slip more easily and therefore requires more tension.
To attempt to stop the buzzing vibrations affecting the sound quality of playback I placed some 1mm thick expanded foam packaging between the top of the motor top plate and the underside of the deck’s motor bracket and placed some sorbothane vibration damping strips I got from SRM Tech around the motor and on top of the deck’s motor bracket. The bolts were only finger tightened and I would have liked to have seen the motor supplied with something around it to suppress noise and vibration.
So I spend a Sunday evening spinning records and repeatedly counting 100 revolutions with stopwatch in hand and watching the supplied strobe through reading glasses with one eye shut. Constantly micro adjusting the tiny speed screw on the back I discover I’m getting nowhere other than frustrated as I’m getting one to two seconds speed variation over three minutes just on one side of a record without adjusting anything. Either the motor hasn’t yet settled down or the belt is slipping. More fun than watching paint dry – you just don’t get this level of excitement from a CD player! Why hasn’t the motor already been run in prior to supply? If I buy a watch I expect it to keep time perfectly straight out of the box… With the belt on the motor it all becomes noticeably even more noisy and, once the platter is up to speed, it also starts clicking rapidly.
Next morning I move the motor back to get more tension in the belt. Only to do this needs total disassembly as the three screws on the top of the motor now catch the deck’s metal bracket and it needs filed more. I leave the platter spinning most of the day for the motor to settle down. By now, after several hours, the motor has stopped clicking and noise is barely any more than the original motor. In an otherwise silent room, with the platter spinning but no record playing, I can only just hear it from a few metres away. I can live with that but it’s hardly £530 worth of improvement. Oh – and there’s also a faint hum from the transformer which is there all the time even when the speed box is switched off, unless switched off at the wall. And an intrusively loud noise as the motor brings the platter up to speed when turning on.
Time to set the speed again. The first side of an LP and the speed varies by up to three seconds over 100 revolutions. Then it settles down. Success. I hope. I am now paranoid where with the old motor I was oblivious and will continue to monitor speed instead of just sitting back and enjoying the music. In time, assuming all is well(!) and the speed remains stable, the paranoia will subside.
So the BIG question – have the sonics improved? Yes. Certainly the sound has been tightened up and probably more besides, punchier, cleaner and clearer. Unfortunately, much as I wish, I can’t be more certain, specific or informative. There was a 48 hour gap between “before” and “after” playing during which I not only fitted the motor and belt but also replaced the bearing. This required prolonged soaking in WD40 before sitting the outside of the housing in a mug of boiling water to heat it up and then turning it upside down and tapping with a hammer to remove the original bearing which, despite regular recent oil changes, had glued itself in. And then another few days of obsessing over the speed rather than listening. So, in fairness, I am comparing motor, PSU, belt and bearing change all at the same time, using an unfamiliar phono stage (the Spartan 15) I had listened to previously for maybe an hour or two. And I am not going to the faff of reinstalling the old motor to hear “before” again as I normally do when comparing. But there is no denying the ol’ Systemdek has never sounded sooo good!
In conclusion; A relatively straightforward (and reversible) install which needs to be left running for a good few days before it settles down (even when after when belts are changed etc.). When half the price of this Origin Live DC100 Motor Kit will buy you an Audio Technica record player complete with motor, PSU, arm, cartridge and phono stage that is able to provide quartz accuracy for speed control first time and every time (as well as three speed settings and the ability to adjust speed) there is no getting away from £530 being expensive for something which is just tasked to turn a platter at one of two constant speeds, especially when the Speed-Box casework is so cheap that it requires masking tape on the back to label the adjusters. That it is also far noisier and much more temperamental (in needing to settle down over days to work optimally) than my Technics SL1200GR turntable, which is silent even with my ear right beside it, is also undeniable.
For these reasons I doubt that a large Japanese corporation would bring this kit to market without substantial improvement. Note: I will update in a couple of months once the motor has properly settled down as I am informed it should get quieter to the point of only being heard a couple of feet away (though I doubt transformer hum or bringing up to speed noise will subside) and stability has a track record to report on. Currently stability seems to be behaving itself. By then I will have also got around to playing with the three screws on the top of the motor which apparently affect the noise, but that’s too much excitement for the time being and I would like to hope that they have been optimally set at the factory. I am reminded of the old cartoon with two old duffers standing over a record player, one saying to the other “It is the expense and inconvenience that drew me to vinyl”…
But – and it’s a very big but – it has managed to succeed in the Holy Grail of lifting the sonic performance of my old Systemdek IIX that I have become sentimentally attached to over the past 35 years to yet further new heights and has hopefully given it another 35 years of trouble free life.
Editor’s note: A motor, if working properly, shouldn’t change the sound of a turntable to any significant degree. The job of the motor is to provide enough torque to spin the platter up to speed from a standstill, and to maintain correct and consistent platter speed without causing fluctuation. It should do so with as little vibration as possible, with minimal stepping (minor ‘bumps’ as the polls move past the stator) and of course, low noise. From my own personal experience, and the review above, it seems the Origin Live DC100 kit fails in every aspect.