Lyra

Based in Tokyo, LYRA is headed by Stig Bjorge from Norway, with American design engineer Jonathan Carr, and Japanese master craftsman Yoshinori Mishima making cartridges and supervising production. All products are manufactured in Japan with microscopic attention to detail under the direct supervision of these three.

LYRA products are characterized by advanced design & engineering allied with Japanese artisanal craftsmanship and build quality. All our products are developed and crafted to be among the very finest available in their category.

Every detail of each LYRA product is thought through and executed with extreme care. LYRA is one of the few audio companies with truly original design & development capability. Each new product is designed from the ground and up and introduces meaningful industry leading advances.

Phono cartridges and related products have been brought together as Lyra Transducer, while our audio electronics remain under the Lyra Connoisseur brand. This rationalisation is reflected on the new site which we hope you enjoy and find informative and clear.

 

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• Cartridges

Delos

An analog LP played back with an MC catridge can sound exceptionally good, Normally, the more cost put into the catridge, the better the sound. However, sometimes what is required is not more cost but more clever engineering, as with the Lyra Delos.

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• Cartridges

Kleos

The Lyra Kleos takes over the proud position as Lyra's mainstray model in heritage of Tsurugi (ca. 1986), Clavis (ca. 1991), Clavis D.C. (a. 1995), and Helikon (ca. 1999) (the latter had a very successful decade long run and will still remain in production for some more time.)

Jonathan Carr's new design builds further on "The New Angle" concept as introduced earlier with the Lyra Delos. The adventages are better tracking ability and a fuller, more capable, very natural sound. The Kleos main body is more massive, and the aluminium alloy used is an advanced aircraft grade aluminium alloy with a beutiful plated finish normally only seen on expensive camera equipment.

Viewing the Kleos from the rear reveals two cylindrical elements, of a particular heavy metal, that are press-fit into the main cartridge structure. Numerous prototypes and contionuos testing produced a final result where the total sonic effect of combining the two material components produced the desired results.

The new Kleos also employs Lyra's latest damping system which tilts the cantilever in the rest position, but facilitates that the geometrical relation between cantilever, coils, and the main cartridge structure is perfectly aligned during play without the common playback error that most cartridges suffer from.

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• Cartridges

Dorian

While the Dorian is Lyra's lowest cost model, it benefits from advanced, proprietary design elements unique to Lyra, and is entirely hand-made to Lyra's quality standards. A custom Lyra-designed cantilever/coil/diamond stylus assembly with boron rod cantilever and MicroRidge natural diamond, line-contact stylus manufactured by Namiki is used for the Dorian.

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• Cartridges

Dorian Mono

Our entry level monaural Moving Coil cartridge, Dorian Mono is a unique, advanced  Lyra design identical in construction and sharing many features with the stereo version. It is entirely hand made, and comes equipped with a custom boron cantilever and Namiki MicroRidge stylus.

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• Cartridges

Argo i

The Argo i features our proprietary, Ogura-made cantilever/coil/diamond stylus assembly with boron rod cantilever and original line-contact stylus. The Argo i is entirely hand-made by Yoshinori Mishima as an extremely refind cartridge that will shine in advanced analog systems with the capability of properly amplifying its 0.45mV output. Compared to the Dorian, the Argo i is more demanding of the phono amplifier and the overall ability of the analog system to properly reproduce the levels of detail and sophistication the cartridge is capable of delivering.

 

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• Cartridges

Helikon

LYRA's best known cartridge, the Helikon is Jonathan Carr’s fourth generation Moving Coil design. Featuring enhancements to the earlier pole-piece-less designs with twin disc magnets eliminating as much conductive material as possible from the vicinity of the generator and gap, the Helikon has practically zero non-functional material in the vicinity of the generator coils.

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• Cartridges

Helikon SL

Designed in response to demand for a Helikon with a single layer (SL) of windings. The single layer winding spec means lower internal impedance and lower output, as a result the LYRA Helikon SL places very great demands on the phono amplifier that follows it. However, some phono stages have been specifically made to cater for low output cartridges, and deliver their best only with a low output signal.

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• Cartridges

Helikon Mono

The new millennium saw LYRA heading back to the future with the introduction of the Helikon Mono, our first monaural cartridge. Our idea was to take the advanced, modern design of the stereo Helikon and turn it into a true monaural cartridge with many unique features including non-polepiece construction and a non-magnetic, non-conductive front magnet carrier.

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• Cartridges

Skala

Close inspection of the Skala gradually reveals a central structure consisting of a vertical metal blade that carries the cantilever system, the magnets and the output pins, i.e. the entire functional core of the cartridge. The blade is clamped against the tonearm headshell by an outer white plastic base into which are drilled the mounting screw holes. Looking from the rear, you can see that the vertical blade passes right through the base and makes direct contact with the headshell. Since the cantilever system is also mounted directly to the blade, the cantilever has in effect a seamless connection path to the tonearm.

 

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• Cartridges

Titan i

The Titan i is fully nude design, with a body shape that has been designed to minimize cavity resonances, and also minimize the presence of conductive materials in the vicinity of the magnetic gap and signal generator coils. For similar reasons, the front magnet carrier of the Titan i is both non-magnetic and non-conductive. This non-conductive, nude construction prevents the formation of dynamically induced variable eddy currents that would otherwise interfere with the primary magnetic field and distort the signal generation process.

 

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• Cartridges

Titan Mono

The coil former is a square permeable plate oriented parallel to the record surface rather than the 45-degree angle used for most stereo cartridges, while the coils are wound so that they only generate a signal when there is horizontal movement of the stylus and cantilever when tracking a record. Two totally separate monaural coils are used in the Titan Mono, since most monaural cartridges are used with stereo amplifiers and stereo speakers. The separate coils also help avoid possible ground loops and hum problems that could otherwise be caused if a single coil is fed into a stereo two-channel amplification system, thereby tying the two channels together electrically.

 

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• Cartridges

Olympos

The LYRA Olympus exists as a special model outside of the standard LYRA range. It is a custom specialty offering, and should not be thought of as our top-of-the-line cartridge. In the early 1990's we introduced a cartridge model called Parnassus which was later referred to as the blue body, original Parnassus to distinguish it from the later Parnassus D.C.t, an entirely different design. The original Parnassus was based around a very unique platinum-iron magnet and two 5N high-purity iron pole pieces. It had a seductive and attractive sound which made it stand out from the competition at the time.


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• MC step-up transformer

Erodion

The Erodion is Lyra's MC step-up transformer, and includes a number of proprietary design concepts and connection methods. Every part and assembly is custom made to create one of the finest products of its kind ever produced. We feel its performance is competitive with any step-up transformer regardless of price or aspiration. Those who look for a "typical transformer sound" may be disappointed by the Erodion: it does not have a sound of its own, but comes very, very close to being a "straight wire with gain". Our goal was to create a neutral step-up device with a high-energy, direct signal path to highlight the strengths of the MC phono cartridge preceding it.    Although especially designed for Lyra cartridges, it is usable with other low-impedance cartridges of 2 - 10 ohms. With a gain of 26 dB the Erodion has been designed to step the output of low output, lowimpedance MC cartridges up to the standard 10 kohms ~ 47 kohms MM phono inputs of preamplifiers and phono stages.

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• Cleaner

SPT

LYRA Stylus Performance Treatment (SPT) is a purified water-based, non-alcohol stylus cleaner that helps keep cartridge styli scrupulously clean. In addition to highly purified water, SPT contains only very small amounts of organic chemical cleaning agents. SPT has proven to be completely safe to use with all phono cartridges (not only LYRA's). Whatever the cartridge, excessive amounts of liquid should never be applied to the stylus and cantilever.

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