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Lyra Kleos arrives after eight months. . Worth the wait? First impressions

About nine months ago I posted some threads on Audiogon to get advice concerning upgrading the Ortofon Black 2M, moving magnet cartridge on my VPI Classic 2 turntable. You all ended up convincied me to not only to upgrade my cartridge, but to upgrade a VPI JMW unipivot tonearm to a VPI gimballed Fatboy tonearm. And after carefully considering all your recommendations, plus doing a lot of research, a Lyra Kleos moving coil cartridge was chosen and ordered.

The VPI Fatboy, ordered about March 1, arrived right away. However the new Lyra cartrdge took a full eight months to arrive from that same date. Apparently there is only one person in Japan with a single assistant making every Lyra cartridge. Picture this poor soul working day and night, chained to the floor in a small basement room with only his assistant Igor to help.

The Lyra Kleos cartridge is now happily and professionally installed on the Fatboy. It has maybe ten or so hours on it at this point. Most noticeable so so far is a better defined bass response. Elements of the sound stage also seem to be more clealy defined. Paticularly on better recorded albums, you can hear everything more clearly, as well as hear things that were simply lost in the mix before. For instance on a Sade record I distinctly heard a background singer singling softly along with her which had never been apparent before. Every sound seems better realized in more detail and depth especially on better recorded albums. On more poorly recorded content, not so much.

All in all I’m happy with the results so far. It took about three hours of break in before the cartridge began to open up. My first clue on how well this cart could perform was listening to a Jaco Pastorius bass run on a nicely recorded Joni Mitchell album. That was exciting. Some older Mies Davis and Charles Mingus sounded great too. On some other material like Mike Bloomfields Live at the Fillmore West the sound wan’t much improved over the Ortofon 2M cart. My ECM records all sounded more well defined so far.

What has been your experience with a Lyra cartridge if you have one? Have you been pleased with yours. At about how many hours did yours peak out. I’ve read their performance peaks at anywhere from 20 to 100 hourswhich is quite a range. What’s your experience? If you knew yours would take eight months to arrive would you have gone another route?

Mike

 

skyscraper
fsonicsmith's avatar
fsonicsmith
931 posts
 

Actually Luzmans' top phono stage has very little ability to change the cartridge loading. If he was to invest in a phono stage he would be better off with a different brand - there are many posts on this forum on the lack of adjustability with the Luxman phono.

If it was me, I'd look at the possibility of increasing the input impedance on his integrated amp moving coil to 470k which should work fine with the Kleos.

The EQ-500 has continuously variable loading from the front panel of 30k to 100k Ohms which encompasses what the vast majority of MC cartridges need. I am sorry to tell you this but the vast majority of MC cartridges are happiest at 50-300k Ohms and not 47K. 47K serves MM and step-up transformers. To your other point I do agree that there is no need to be wedded to Luxman. But Luxman does make very well engineered and great sounding gear with amazing product support. 

karl_desch's avatar
karl_desch
422 posts
 

A nice 1:10 ratio SUT going into the 47k input would also be a potential improvement.  But I’d wait for several months to let the cart open up and get to know its capabilities.  

skyscraper OP
824 posts
 

Fsonicsmith, I looked up the Luxman EQ-500. It looked interesting until discovering it cost as much as the Fatboy and Lyra Kleos combined. Mind you, Audiogon folks already convinced me to double my budget to obtain a new tonearm for the Lyra, so please temper your suggestions. I’m not poor, but do have to live within my means. Of course with Christmas coming up I’d be happy to forward my address if any of you’d like to send one. Gift wrapping would be optional.

I’m curious about what they’d do to modify my integrated amp in Luxman’s service department to optimize it’s performance for the Lyra Kleos. Do you or anyone know? I did speak to someone named Jeff there right after purchasing the Luxman integrated amp. He was quite helpful as you indicate they were to you. Their products do seem to be very well engineered too, as you say, which factored heavily into purchasing one of their amps in the first place.

Dover and Karl, it would be nice to acquire a new phono stage, but honestly not in the cards right now. Maybe if the economy ever recovers it might be time to reconsider.

Mike

dover
2,177 posts
 

@fsonicsmith 

The EQ-500 has continuously variable loading from the front panel of 30k to 100k Ohms which encompasses what the vast majority of MC cartridges need.

You have misread the specs.

The MM input has variable loading - 30k to 100k.

The MC input has only 2 fixed options for loading and does not have any flexibility.

As I said there have been several threads identifying this issue.

Here are the specs from the brochure for the EQ500 -

Input impedance MM: 30kΩ to 100kΩ (variable)
MC: high 40Ω, MC: low 2.5Ω

 

Its a little old fashioned in design.

dover
2,177 posts
 

@skyscraper

Dover and Karl, it would be nice to acquire a new phono stage, but honestly not in the cards right now.

I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it - you have a great system - probably better than most here. Tweaking the loading would be nice, but if it’s too hard don’t worry.

If your amp is similar to the EQ500 do try both MC inputs though - high and low - the high (40ohms) simply has less gain and higher input impedance compared to the low (2.5ohms ) which has more gain and lower input impedance. One or other will sound preferable - trust your ears.

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