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Lyra Atlas experiences

A few years ago, I invested in a Lyra Atlas cartridge / pickup. I have moved up, from Lyra Clavis in the early 2000s and Lyra Titan i later. The Atlas was expensive, but I have not looked back. Yet I wonder, can something more be done, to optimize the Atlas, in my system, and others. How can this remarkable pickup run its best. What are the best phono preamp and system matches. Should the system be rearranged. Have anyone done mods or DIYs to their systems to get the "reception" right? What happened? Comments welcome. You dont need to own a Lyra Atlas but you should have heard it, to join this discussion. Comments from the folks at Lyra are extra welcome - what is your experience.
Oystein
o_holter
ninetynine's avatar
ninetynine
111 posts
 
The SMEV is a great arm, but not for a cartridge like the Atlas. The compliance is ~ 12x10 cm/dyne bei 100 Hz
You need a heavier arm to get best results. I had a Kleos in an Origin Live Conqueror with 18gramm eff. mass and in a Reed 3P with the same mass.

The SMEV is a great combination with Van den Hull cartridges.
nandric's avatar
nandric
3,263 posts
 

The simplest way to check the anti-skate is by ''tracking abiity''

test on the test records. The first distortion will appear in the

right channel. By increasing the anti-skate force the mentioned

distortion will disappear. So much about the causal relation.

However one should not try to get those 80-90 microns ''pure''

because to much anti-skate is worse than no skate at all.

o_holter OP
541 posts
 
Heavier arm - perhaps - I think J Carr wrote that it is possible to tweak the mass of the arm. I thought the SME V would be an OK match. I’ve tried some more mass (damping material) on the headshell and the arm but it didn’t work for me (not even some ’magic dots’ I had).
I did some eyeballing tests now, using a loupe and then some 20x glasses. Stylus settles as before, a little to the right, in the hole in the front. Mirror test; it looks vertical. I had to turn down the AS to 1.1 to avoid the arm sliding to the right (the platter is level). I wanted to have a look at the stylus tip also, but the glasses are too weak. So I tried a little 100x microscope with light. I got nervous, however, it has to go extremely close the cantilever. Perhaps later I will try a small USB microscope that I also have. But well, so far, there is no visible sign that the azimuth is off. So it should be an OK starting point for listening tests.
ninetynine's avatar
ninetynine
111 posts
 
All theory, after repairing in Japan my Kleos had a very high compliance and my bass speakers made synchron movements to the out of center vinyl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1yvgCINtI4
o_holter OP
541 posts
 
Nandric - as related above, the test record method doesn't work in my case, I end up with far too much antiskate (2.7), and adjusting by ear I've gone down to 1.5 or so. And I recently got a clear message from SME saying don't use these tracks, instead start AS equal to the weight and fine tune by ear from there. These distortion tests are more for a rough first check perhaps - is the cartridge very off (or damaged). The Atlas sails through them without problems.
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