Lyra Kleos Repair

Send it to the co and don't wear sweaters when playing your system.

Lyra...none other or it will come back a nonLyra

Contact Alasdair Patrick ([email protected]) and he will take care of you. Great guy and Audioquest is a wonderful company to deal with, along with Lyra, of course.

Audioquest will email you a RMA form to fill out you email it back. They will then send you all the info needed to return it to them and they will forward it on to Lyra in Japan.

Mine took about 7 weeks from start to finish.

Thank you very much mofimadness!!   I will do so immediately.

More affordable solution is to contact Soundsmith and let Peter Linderman do his magic.Takes about two months to get it back and good as new.Ask me how I know.

Ok, I'm asking.  What cartridge did you have Peter rebuild?

If you like your Lyra a Lyra...I'd send it back to Lyra.   Mofimadness has the best path in my opinion...

jfrech, that's my first choice.  I've sent them an email, I'm just a little worried about the cost.

Dear mdp: Lyra Kleos is a great performer and if I was you I will try that my Lyra stay at least in the same condition.
That only can do it Lyra ( J.Carr. ) because the designer was who did it the cartridge voicing and was fine tunned during that voicing proccess along that when JC return to you you will receive not only a new Kleos but with all the up-grades that Lyra did it even if JC never promoted those up-dates in the cartridge.

franklapdog said that other option makes " magic ". That " magic " just does not exist with any after market rettiper but the cartridge designer that's the only person that knows the cartridge desing targets and how to fullfil those targets.
An after market retipper can does the  job and when the cartridge returns always sounds DIFERENT not better but diferent. Many of us could think that sounds better but it's not true.

If we have a Lamborghini we don't send it to repair/fix to the Honda distributor, right? so why any one of us could even think to send it to Honda?, have no sense to me.

Regards and enjhoy the music,
R.

Thanks Raul.

I have a Lyra Delos that needed rebuild so I contacted audioquest. The price for rebuild was more than I paid for it new. Total ripoff. I sent to Andy at the needle clinic but have not got it back yet. 

analogluvr, if that's the case with mine I'll be sick.

Analogluvr,

Is Andy the guy in Seattle that rebuilds cartridges at a fair price?

A great company. You get about 300€ discount for a new Kleos, when the "old" is fault. One big point for EMT.

analogluvr - How can you claim that "Andy at the needle clinic" is a better deal when you haven't received your cartridge back yet?  How do you know it will perform as good as the original?

Sending a Lyra to ANYONE but J. Carr/Yoshinori Mishima @ Lyra is a fools errand.

Please pardon me, but these are precision, handcrafted, devices that serviced by ANYONE else, will simply not return to you, what you initially, so dearly paid for. You will not have the same sonic performance.

I’m soon to purchase my forth and fifth (mono & stereo) Lyra.

i would wish you good luck, but I don’t believe in luck. I do wish you well.

I'm waiting to hear back from Audioquest/Lyra before I do anything.

I was just quoted $2,775.00 for a rebuild, which I find insulting to say the least.   That's $1,000 off retail for a new one.  

Wow!   To say I'm disappointed would be an understatement.

mdp, thanks for posting that...I'm now far less interested in a Lyra, LOL.

I'm very sorry to hear that mdb. So, does anyone know, is $1k better than the core trade value?

I don't expect them to lose money for something I broke, it was totally my fault.  But to expect me to pay almost as much as a new cartridge for a repair job is a little hard to swallow.

I wasn’t aware that the Lyra carts had gone up so much in price. Last time I checked the Kleos was like $2895.00.

$2775 is A LOT for that, I agree.

I've had 8-9 carts redone by Peter at SoundSmith and a couple done by Andy at The Needle Clinic.

http://www.sound-smith.com/services/cartridge-rebuilding-retipping

http://www.phonocartridgeretipping.com/

These were all carts that the manufacturers were no longer around, so I didn’t have another option. All of the ones I had redone by either guy came back as good is not better than the original.

But, as mentioned above, it will not be a true Lyra if Lyra doesn’t rebuild it. That’s not to say it won’t come back just as good.

The one I sent to Lyra was out of warranty, (the suspension had collapsed), but they fixed it for free and even cleaned and polished the tip and sent all new mounting hardware with it.

$2775 versus around $300, I don’t know...

Oh boy!  at that price I might just take a chance on a rebuild by Andy or Peter.  The cantilever may be able to be repaired BTW.  I had a Blackbird with a decidedly off kilter cantilever and Peter at Soundsmith repaired it for the $16.00 in shipping cost!  If you don't like the sound, just snap the cantilever off and send it to Lyra.
I just bought a Ortolan Jubilee and checked the price of a rebuild through Ortofon and it was a bit more than $1,000.  Whew, glad I went with them over the Lyra I was eyeing.  
Lyra is too full of themselves these days it seems.  Not an ounce of customer loyalty.  I have a friend with a Lyra built but not Lyra named cart and I think they offered him no support what so ever.

I’m just curious if anyone in the industry commonly rebuilds a low to mid output moving coil motor and (presumably) replaces a boron cantilever, in this price range for "cost or good will" because if they do, I’m certainly not aware of it.

(If you can’t afford Lamborghini maintenance, perhaps, having one in the garage, and worse yet, one on the road, is a bad idea. Not being happy with the repair bill is only human. Taking it to a fiat dealer is sheer madness.)

If I blow up the engine, should I have to buy a new car ???????

Rob and I disagree on this.  While I agree that sending it to Lyra is optimum, people have cars repaired by other than the dealer all the time.  I for instance rebuilt quite a few Masaratti engines for the machine shop I worked at.  As a matter of fact we rebuilt many BMW engines for the dealers themselves.  Not that that has any bearing on the issue at hand really.  If the OP can't or doesn't want to spend that kind of money a REASONABLE but not option is available.   I don't think the OP is asking for work gratis but reasonable customer service to insure loyalty would not be out of line.  I for one will not consider a Lyra after this.  How much business will Lyra lose from a few postings like this on on other forums?
BTW, I have a Blackbird with original stylus and one retired by Andy.  Anyone is welcome to come by and see if they can hear a difference. 
As it stands now, that Lyra is next to worthless.

wntrmute2, I agree!

Retired = retipped

analogluvr
02-01-2016 3:08am
I have a Lyra Delos that needed rebuild so I contacted audioquest. The price for rebuild was more than I paid for it new. Total ripoff. I sent to Andy at the needle clinic but have not got it back yet.

Best of luck.  Andy destroyed two of mine without a care in the world, and won't even send the broken bits back as I refuse to pay a made-up "inspection"  charge that he tacked on later because I refused to pay for unauthorized work. 

Hum,  not my experience at all nor a close friend.  

On another note.  I believe SoundSmith will retip or rebuild any of his cartridges for no more than 30% of the purchase price.  You might sell your Kleos for a few hundred bucks and combine that with what you'd spend on repairs and buy something better supported by the manufacturer.  Just my 2 cents.

A lot of people report good experiences with him, and in the grand scheme of things I don't think the typical retip is all that difficult.  I'm just saying when things go wrong with him, they go very wrong. 

Dave, we’ve been down this road... We disagree my friend. I have no issue with someone making whatever choice they wish to choose about what is their property. Yet the simple fact remains that no one, has the replacement parts, nor the knowledge base, possibly even skill level, to replace and rebuild that cart as it originally was. So what you wind up with is a "bastard" at a discount price. We can argue until the sun goes down but until someone can compare an original Lyra, side by side with a "bastard" rebuild and say they are the same, they are not. Now the question becomes, what will one wind up with??? Hard to say. I truly feel for mdb or any of us facing a due bill like the one from Lyra. But the difference between me and you as well is I absolutely refuse to villainize Lyra in this situation, as they did nothing wrong. The fact that their products are expensive is a relative one. IMHO they offer exceptional performance and value and yes, they are bloody expensive! And from my experiences with Lyra I am convinced that I get what I have paid for. My last two have lasted nearly nine years a piece, with a roughly 30% trade value. Everyone has to make choices based on their own economy and sense of value, I just wish to express in this regard that although many folks (including yourself) have chosen to go the SoundSmith route, it needs to be understood that you get what you pay for, and the sonic character of your cart will not necessarily have any resemblance to the original cart that was sent in for rebuilding, nor will there be any guarantee that it’s life expectancy will be that of the original product. I wish mdb the very best in whatever path he may choose and I hope he has a splendid listening experience.

I can, however, compare two identical carts.  Not $3,000 ones but 1,000-1,200 dollar ones and to my poor ears it is impossible to hear a difference.  Maybe the retipped one sounds slightly smoother when compared to the one that has over 2000 hours on it but I would expect that wouldn't you?  Otherwise why retip/rebuild?
Based on the way Lyra is treating this customer, I will choose to vote with my dollars and spend them elsewhere.  If I remember,  you were a little disappointed when they wouldn't give you a credit on a trade in.  
 You and many others have far better ears than I.   I respect that so will defer to your expertice.  
Good luck as well to the OP.

A smoothing can be deceiving. It could be a reduced sense of detail and micro-dynamics, and really be a lose of acoustic space or it could just be a refocusing/rebalancing and could be most pleasing. So subjective, so hard to say. 

Let's not create additional confusion here. Just to be clear, a "retip" = a stylus change, and although often not apples to apples, much less of a character changer and possible performance changer than a "rebuild"= different stylus, cantilever, suspension former, and hand wound coil. The later being what our dear friend mdb is looking at funding. 

With a Lyra made/ Linn branded cart, my understanding is Lyra will not give me the trade value Linn will toward same. Oh, well. 

I do agree with you Dave that we all have to draw the line on cost at some point. I'm not so sure I feel Lyra is mistreating anyone here though. If they had implied or expressed some kind of warranty against user mishap and then fallen short of that, I could understand some resentment, but given the circumstances (as much as it pains us) I have none and would not withhold future investment because of it. 

Dear wntrmute2:  """  the way Lyra is treating this customer, I will choose to vote with my dollars and spend them elsewhere.  """

the subject here between your opinion and the r_f_sayles that as I posted is the same as mine is not about price but way deeper than that.

Now, if instead of Lyra the cartridge is a top of the line Dynavector, Clearaudio, Koetsu, Benz Micro and the like all these manufacturers gives you the same price range to rebuild their cartridges.
Lyra is not given a bad treatment to this customer or any of its customers it's just that's siemple that way, always with any cartridge manufacturer with cartridges of these kind of models.

Regards and enjoy thye music,
R.

^ Soundsmith states clearly that they will rebuild/refurbish any of their carts for 20% of the new cost.  Seems that there is at least one high end manufacturer that doesn't follow along.  
Ortofon rebuilds theirs for less than 50% of the new cost for the Cadenza line.  So there is another that is not totally bending the customer over a barrel.
  
Lyra is technically doing nothing wrong (the credit default swap fiasco was also a case of not doing something "wrong") but I don't like those business practices and choose to disagree with them and will probably vote with my dollars when it comes time to spend my money.  

When my Subaru WRX engine ate a bunch of valves at 120,00 miles, they could have said tough but instead they bent over backwards to offer either to buy back the car at a reasonable price, or give me top dollar on a trade in and give me a very sweet deal on a replacement while loaning me a car free of charge for over 2 months.  I remain a customer of Subaru.  

I have heard some fantastic SoundSmith carts and will probably lean that way with any new purchase.  Especially with the repair he did for me free of charge!

^^ Odd that you'd consider a touch of "smoothness" from a retip as compared to a stylus with thousands of hours on it as,  "It could be a reduced sense of detail and micro-dynamics, and really be a lose of acoustic space or it could just be a refocusing/rebalancing and could be most pleasing"  Perhaps it sounds new?  You are welcome over and listen for yourself.

That's exactly what I expected!  2700$ for a retip is sheer madness. They can bs all they want about all the other inspecting they are going to do but it is not worth quarter of that. Also why is the cost for his kleos almost double the cost of my delos. The job would be pretty much the same. They quoted my delos at 1600 USD which was more than I paid for it new. I paid 1800CAD. I will not buy another Lyra which is unfortunate because I like the sound. 
Look at vandenhul. He rebuilds his for around $300 if I'm not mistaken. How can there be such a difference?

I'm not rich, I get so sick of the rip offs in this hobby!!  It seems like almost everyone thinks about how much money they can suck out of you. 

analogluvr, you are mistaken. Lyra did not quote 2700 USD for a "retip". They have quoted for a "rebuild". I know this explanation will offer little to end the negative tiered though. 

You guys are missing the point...the specially trained 'pixie' has to work on the cartridge and only he ( maybe a she..??, but I highly doubt it) can do this intricate and complex work. The whole reason that Lyra's are so costly ( to some) is because of the fact that Mr. Miyagi and his specially trained 'pixie' are the only ones with the skill set to do the work....or so we are lead to believe! This does NOT come cheaply guys, LOL.

Thanks.  I'm still trying to decide on all the options.

The thing I question is, why is there only one fee for repair?  They haven't even seen the cartridge to determine what needs to be done.  If all it need is a new cantilever, why charge me for the whole cartridge?

This is one reason I will never buy a used (slightly used..only 2 hours on it) cartridge.  A Soundsmith (et al) rebuild is not a Lyra rebuild.  The above Subaru story is excellent to know.  That's the proper way to treat a customer.  (Ayre, Vandersteen, VPI, are in the same league.)

To answer your question above,it was the Atlas and all it needed was a retip.Came back sounding as it was when new.Peter claims it's an easier fix to do both if the cantilever is out of wack.but mine was ok.Good luck in whatever you decide to do.

mdp, I think the reason for the "one" price is that Lyra, Ortofon, Benz and many others are really not repairing your cartridge's single obvious problem.  They are going to provide you with all new parts installed in your chassis (so to speak).  It is really the only way they can be sure to  provide the original Lyra sound.  Basically, you are buying a new cart.  Now we are back to our differences with those that say it is the only "correct" option.  if you want that 100% guarantee of perfect original sound then you should probably spend the money Lyra charges.  If you are willing to risk a much smaller sum, then having someone repair the cart will give you a shot at returning the cart to similar but maybe not exactly the original sound.  How much that matters to you is something only you can decide!  I personally would have Peter at SoundSmith repair the thing with a similar material cantilever and a stylus with as similar shape as the original and try it.  If unhappy, (no one seems to be by all the glowing reports).  Send it back to Lyra or resell it as is and purchase something a little less dear.  

Thanks, I appreciate your advice.

(If you can’t afford Lamborghini maintenance, perhaps, having one in the garage, and worse yet, one on the road, is a bad idea. Not being happy with the repair bill is only human. Taking it to a fiat dealer is sheer madness.)

IMHO Fiat would make the Lamborghini more reliable

Mdb, it's too bad we couldn't have J. Carr weigh in here with a proper explanation as he has been very forthright and most revealing in the past on A'gon about many things analogue and Lyra.

As I understand it, when replacing a cantilever, you wind up completely rebuilding and tuning the suspension in place, unlike "retipping" which which is merely refitting a stone. The only thing saved is the base housing and the rare earth magnets, though still of value, most of the value lies in the craftsmanship and time. A highly practiced and skilled builder, under a microscope, must rewind the moving coil (thinner than a human hair), and solder in, precisely and tune the whole assembly in place. You wind up getting a new cantilever/stylus (which in a Lyra is custom cut and polished as I understand it, not off the shelf like many, many high end carts), suspension former, hand wound coil, and the dust close out sheet. All this must be tweeked to perfection by a craftsman who understands the results, not a trainee from Walmart or a backyard mechanic. It is a tedious, precision task. 

So I think it is unfair to color this as some have, and underrate what you get for what you pay. Some have brought up the point that there are others that will make a functional facsimile of a MC cart for a hell of a lot less. This will always be the case. I would argue, if it sounded like a Lyra, but it doesn't, than buy it. (Caveat: there are a lot of nice sounding carts in the world, pick your flavor) A customer must decide for themselves what makes sense, and what satisfies their needs. I can't speak for someone's ears or decide with their wallet, but I certainly can with mine. This is a hobby or pastime of discriminating taste, and nuance, and for me, Lyra has proven a level of excellence that is rare these days, rare has a price. 

So just an update for everyone, I got my 2 cartridges back from Andy Kim at the needle clinic.  He wasn't cheaper, it was actually more expensive than Soundsmith.  He quoted me $500 USD for the Delos and $400 for the Benz for what I thought was going to be just a stylus on the Delos and a cantilever and stylus on the Benz.  I went with it anyway because of the quick turnaround.  Well I should have been more patient and gone with Soundsmith.  Firstly it looks like the Delos had a cantilever and stylus put on contrary to my instructions.  Second, one channel is not working at all now.  Thirdly, the Benz is now out of phase.  Fourthly after messing with the Benz for about 2 hours trying to get the phase right and listening, it looks like the suspension is collapsing.  I'm pretty upset to say the least.  
Andy's initial response was "it must be a problem with my system" with regards to the Delos and nothing with regards to the Benz. Then he suggested I measure the Delos with on ohmeter.  I thought I read somewhere that if you do that you can fry the coils?  Now he is saying for me to send them back and IF there is something wrong he will fix it and refund my shipping.  Trouble is I've lost all faith in the guy, what if he broke the Delos beyond repair?  I'm leaning toward trying to recoup my money and sending to Soundsmith.
What are you guys thinking would be the best route?  Heads up I have a very busy weekend so may not be to quick to respond.

Sorry.  I won my PayPal dispute against him, but it was only for what I had to pay to get my cartridges back, not the $1K in destroyed property he subsequently kept.  I can send you endless email chains of him trying to get me to pay for work I explicitly forbid from the beginning, how I don't know anything because I think the boron pipe cantilever he shattered (x2) is far superior to his replacements, etc. 

This is is the fourth time people have reported him doing different work than agreed or doing unauthorized work. The first three were private correspondence to me after I published the issues I had.  

I'd run.