Lyra - Delos Moving Coil Cartridge

The entry point to Lyra’s range and the cartridge that introduced New Angle — a suspension built to be correct while it is playing, not while it is hanging in the air.

Every moving coil cartridge has a problem most manufacturers simply live with. For the generator to work properly, the angles between the magnetic circuit, the signal coils and the core need to be aligned; when they are not, a strong directional magnetic flux forms and pushes the core toward one direction, so it can no longer move with equal ease in all directions. Conventional cartridges are built so those angles line up when no tracking force is applied — which is to say, when the cartridge is not actually playing anything. Lower the stylus onto a record and the tracking force pushes everything out of alignment, costing resolution, tracking ability and dynamic range.

The Delos was Lyra’s answer, and it introduced the technology the company calls New Angle. The body is built with an unusually shallow angle and paired with asymmetrical dampers, so at rest the coils and core sit at a more upright angle than the magnetic circuit — deliberately, visibly wrong. Apply the recommended tracking force and the stylus pressing into the groove deforms those asymmetrical dampers into a symmetrical shape, and the misalignment disappears. The cartridge is optimised for the only condition that matters: the one it plays in.

The rest is Lyra’s usual refusal to compromise. A Namiki microridge line-contact nude diamond, 2.5 by 75 microns, surface-mounted on a solid boron rod whose short one-point wire suspension mounts directly into the cartridge body rather than through an intermediate joint. Coils are wound three layers deep in 6N high-purity copper on a square permalloy former. At 0.6mV the Delos has the most generous output in the Lyra line, which makes it noticeably easier to partner with a mid-priced phono stage than the lower-output models above it.

It is designed by Jonathan Carr and hand-built in Japan by Yoshinori Mishima, who does final assembly, voicing and testing, with Akiko Ishiyama on primary build. The Delos has been in continuous production since 2009, making it the longest-lived design in the current catalogue, and it is stereo-only — unlike the Kleos, Etna and Atlas there is no SL or Mono version, and there is no Delos Lambda.

Features

• Lyra’s New Angle suspension — coils and magnets come into alignment only once playing tracking force is applied
• Namiki microridge line-contact nude diamond stylus, 2.5 x 75 µm, surface-mounted
• Solid boron rod cantilever mounted directly into the cartridge body, with no intermediate joint
• Coils wound three layers deep in 6N high-purity copper on a square permalloy former
• 0.6mV output — the most generous in the Lyra range, and the easiest to partner with a mid-priced phono stage
• Anodized aluminium body with non-parallel surfaces to break up internal resonances
• Designed by Jonathan Carr, hand-built in Japan by Yoshinori Mishima and Akiko Ishiyama
• Body threaded for 2.6mm JIS mounting screws — no nuts required
• Covered by Lyra’s cartridge exchange programme rather than a replaceable stylus

Specifications

• Designer: Jonathan Carr
• Builder: Yoshinori Mishima (final build, voicing and testing); Akiko Ishiyama (primary build)
• Type: Medium weight, medium compliance, low-impedance moving coil cartridge
• Stylus: Namiki microridge line-contact nude diamond, 2.5 µm x 75 µm, surface-mounted
• Cantilever: Solid boron rod with short one-point wire suspension, mounted directly into the cartridge body
• Body: Anodized aluminium
• Coils: 3 layers deep, 6N high-purity copper on a square permalloy former. 6.3 Ω self-impedance, 9.5 µH inductance
• Output Voltage: 0.6mV at 5cm/sec, zero to peak, 45 degrees (CBS test record; other test records may give different results)
• Frequency Range: 10Hz – 50kHz
• Channel Separation: Greater than 30dB at 1kHz
• Compliance: Approximately 12 x 10^-6 cm/dyne at 100Hz. Note Lyra quotes compliance at 100Hz; many makers quote it at 10Hz, where the figure reads much higher
• Tracking Force: 1.65g – 1.75g, with 1.72g recommended
• Recommended Load, direct into MC input: 97.6 Ω – 806 Ω. Lyra treats this as a guideline to be finalised by listening
• Recommended Load, via step-up transformer: A transformer designed for 5–10 Ω cartridge impedance, its output feeding a 10k–47k Ω MM-level RIAA input via a short, low-capacitance cable
• Recommended Tonearms: Medium to medium-high mass, which covers the bulk of the market
• Mounting Screws: 2.6mm, 0.45 pitch, JIS standard. The body is threaded, so no nuts are needed
• Mounting Holes to Stylus Tip: 9.5mm — the same as the Kleos, so the two are alignment-interchangeable
• Weight: 7.3g without stylus cover
• Variants: Stereo only. There is no Delos SL, no Delos Mono and no Delos Lambda
• Origin: Made in Japan
• Note: Lyra publishes no VTA, break-in period, channel balance tolerance or warranty term for this model — warranty is administered by the regional distributor. Older Delos specification sheets still circulating quote 8.2 Ω coils, 1.75g tracking force and a 91 Ω – 47k Ω load; those figures are superseded