Lyra Atlas experiences

Nandric...My wife was a lawyer (lost her about 12 years ago to a failed heart transplant that was done by the famous Dr. Oz....a much nicer guy in person than on television...we used to have dinner with the Oz's...his liscense plate was "Wizard" ((which I think was kool))  )  ...not much rubbed off on me.

Drastic....Personally I like the Foz. Yes it is very sensitive to voltage, consequently I use a new battery once, and then keep it for my smoke alarms. I’ve used mine 5 or 6 times, and think its easy and accurate...love the idiot lights ...... keeps the guessing at a minimum

Drastic....  Regarding the hot pressings that put down your Lyra..... I'm sure you double and triple checked all your adjusting parameters and the stylus itself.  If it isn't long in the toothe....if it were mine, I'd send it back to Lyra for an inspection/evaluation.  I would think they would do that no cost.....but....

Dear @drastic : """  on rare occasions and only with a "hot" recording of piano, I'll hear breakup in the left channel,   """

Maybe the hardest high recorded velocity LP grooves to track ( other that the Telarc 1812 bass range. ) are above mid range ( usually well above that. ) frequency range and especially on high velocities in a piano recording.

You own a great audio system and I'm sure that the TT/cartridge/tonearm is just on target as is its relationsship in between.

My experiences on similar phenomenon with diferent cartridges comes because a mistracking ( not set up. ). This " mistracking " could comes from a not very good cartridge/tonearm match ( that with you seems to me is ok in this regards. ) or because those recorded high veloties are over the self cartridge abilities and in this case there is nothing to do about other than test same tracks with a diferent tonearm.

All cartridges has tracking abilities limits and maybe that's what's happening in your Atlas sample.

Now, with those high velocity recording LP grooves is a must that the cartridge stylus tip not only stay in good shape but absolutely in clean/pristine condition and obviously that the cartridge suspension been in optimal operation conditions.

You said: "" on rare occasions "" , question here can be: always with the same piano LP tracks?

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.

One more thing to check, particularly if "mistracking" happens only on a few recordings, is to see if that problem might just be the recording microphone overloading.  I noticed such a problem with one record  where I assumed the problem was either mistracking or groove damage until I heard the digital release and noticed the same problem.  

I don't know about the Atlas specifically (I own a Titan i), but, all of the Lyra cartridges I have owned tracked real records quite well (not that good on some of test records) and I would not expect to hear much mistracking.