Unfortunately I (as I believe is the case with most other craftsman-oriented audio manufacturers) don't have the large-scale mechanized manufacturing facilities that would allow audio products to be produced at the low prices that Audio-Technica, Denon or Ortofon can manage. Nonetheless, I am focused on providing value for the money. Even if cartridges like the Delos or Kleos aren't outright cheap, I try my best to make sure that they are not overpriced for their material and manufacturing content and sound quality, nor (IMHO) for the design effort that I personally put in.
FWIW, the pricing of each of our cartridge models is based primarily on what they cost us to produce, rather than their performance levels relative to the competition. That's probably why some reviewers tell us that our cartridges could sell for hundreds more than their actual retail prices. In reality, I start each new design with a clear idea of the production budget allowed for each cartridge unit. My view is that the more sound and build quality I can figure out how to extract from the engineering budget defined, the more value the cartridge will represent, and hopefully the more popular it will be. Conversely, if I can only figure out how to extract a limited amount of sound quality from the engineering budget, the cartridge will be perceived as being less desirable.
As to getting the manufactured cost of a cartridge down to US$100, I couldn't do it, unless the cartridge design were very, very different from what we've done so far. As it stands, our manufacturing and operational costs are too expensive to make such targets realistic, so we'd need to reduce costs in a big way. US$100 doesn't even cover the costs for the stylus assemblies that we use, we'd definitely need to lower component quality, such as using cheaper cantilever assemblies and lower-grade styli, and switching from machined metal to molded plastic bodies. Our present labor costs of employing skilled craftsmen mean that a cheaper cartridge would need to be of mostly machine-made construction, with as little hand-made content as possible. This suggests some kind of fixed-coil cartridge (MM or MI etc), rather than an MC, the use of mainly molded or pressed components, and increased production volumes. Third possibility would be to try moving production to a cheaper country, and hope that quality control won't be too much of a headache (based on previous experiences).
However, every one of the above items is likely to result in reduced product quality. Is that really what the target customers of brands like Lyra, Koetsu, Allearts, Miyabi etc. - that are principally known for hand-made cartridges and human craftsmanship - expect (or want)? I acknowledge that there is a market demand for cheaper cartridges, but as long as other, bigger companies exist to satisfy that demand for cheaper cartridges, I see little point in forcing Lyra to pursue the path of cheaper-above-all.
IMO, the only item among the above that may possibly be worthwhile for Lyra to pursue is a fixed-coil cartridge, because I think that there may still be room to come up with a fixed-coil design that is technically unique and worthwhile above and beyond its price (while keeping manufacturing costs under control). The caveats are that I would need to be able to come up with design that was novel and clever enough, next we'd need to be able to come up with the money to finance the tooling and molding costs (for higher-volume production), finally we'd need to consider if we were at all able to afford the kind of marketing and promotional effort that would be required for a higher-volume cartridge. The last time that I looked into tooling and molding costs for a totally new fixed-coil cartridge design was around 2003 (AFAIR), and the total sum was upwards of US$100,000 (again AFAIR). If I were to designed another fixed-coil cartridge today, it would almost certainly be quite different from the design that I did in 2003, but I would be shocked if tooling and molding costs were lower now. The two key questions would be, do we have the technical and financial ability to accomplish such a project, and would it be worth the risks?
cheers, jonathan carr
PS. I should state that I'm not in audio for the money (as my income tax statement proves - grin). I'm in audio because I enjoy designing, building, and particularly designing and building innovative things that wouldn't exist if I didn't take on the challenge. I believe that this kind of attitude is fairly common among craftsmen, artisans (and musicians). We do what we do mainly because we enjoy it and we relish the challenge of pushing ourselves and our craft as far as we can. Whatever money we earn is important in that it allows us to continue doing what we love - but no more than that.
