Brand new Lyra Delos - skewed cantilever


Hi everybody, first of all thanks for the very insightful tips I've been able to gather over years of thread reading.

Today I am finally starting my own thread to ask a question about a brand new Lyra Delos I received this week. This is my first ever cart over 1K and I was expecting something amazing.

Well, the sound is indeed amazing! Even though after 2h30 of cart usage I am still struggling to find some meat to the bones. Sound is VERY precise but I expect it to become even better as hours go by.

However, as soon as I started aligning the cart I found the cantilever went slightly to the left. I have asked my dealer about this and he said it was nothing to worry about but I was hoping to get somebody's opinion on the forum, maybe even Jonathan Carr's. I have included photos.

Thanks a lot for your help everyone!

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anthos314

I have got news from my dealer, the Lyra is on its way back to me after a short trip to Japan. From what Lyra told me it seems the screw at the front of the cart had been squeezed too tight, skewing the cantilever and causing distortion. Thank you Lyra, can't wait to do some serious vinyl rediscovering.

Hi everyone, it has been a very long while. My SME IV was serviced so I had to wait a few more months to finally experience the Lyra sound.

First of all I thank all of you for your help. My Lyra Delos is now singing beautifully, and I am amazed at the amount of details it draws from the grooves. I found the sound was a bit lean at first so I decided to set the load at 116 ohms rather than the recommended 130 to 260 ohms.

We'll see when it is totally burnt-in.

That is very un Lyra like and most definitely wrong. I would send those pictures to your dealer. It should be replaced. Unfortunately, you should have reported it before you mounted it. The tendency is going to be to blame you for Fing it up somehow. But, if the cantilever is not bent midshaft it is their problem. Get to it ASAP.

@mijostyn : please be aware that the issue has already been taken care of, that Lyra has finished servicing @anthos314 Delos and he has received his cartridge back.

Incidentally, the reason why this Delos had a skewed cantilever was not due to a manufacturing issue. Rather, somewhere between us (manufacturer) and anthos314 (customer), someone re-torqued the screw holding the front magnet carrier (which corresponds to the front yoke of a conventional MC). This twisted the front magnet carrier, which affected the alignment of the cantilever and its freedom of movement.

We know this because when we received the Delos, in addition to the front magnet carrier being at an angle (which anthos3147s photos show), its mounting screw had been tightened with far higher torque than our specifications allow.

As to how, when, where or who fiddled with the front magnet carrier, this could have been occurred in the process of a customs inspection, it could have been something else, we have no idea. All that we can say is what the evidence on the cartridge tells us happened to it.

@anthos314, if you can use a very low-capacitance tonearm cable (preferably short), you are likely to find that the sonically optimal load changes.

hth, jonathan

@jcarr , Thank you for responding. Serves me right for not reading the entire post.

You might want to use some Loctite on those screws:-)  I'm sure you have seen a bunch of odd things happen to your cartridges besides broken cantilevers. We'd love to hear the stories! 

Anyway, like I said before, "Very Un Lyra Like." I have never heard anything but great quality and service from Lyra. 

2 questions. What do you think of transimpedance phono stages and When will the Lyra Atlas Lambda SL be available again?