A few years ago you could buy a condo for 10 grand. I would have called the IO/silver "The Lone Ranger" for obvious reasons. ![]() In the meantime, I got another $10,000 cartridge to check out: the Audio Note Kondo IO-J/silver. I'm still trying to get a Clearaudio Insider Reference to audition. But Scan-Tech's Lyra line has been very well received among audiophiles, and the Helikon sounded impressively transparent to me, as I described in the August "Analog Corner." None of this, of course, guarantees great sound, and taste in cartridges varies. According to Scan-Tech, most other cartridges use an enclosed body or a vinyl covering to protect the damper and coil, but washi paper "breathes." Scan-Tech feels the protective measures used in some other designs can create resonances that block the free flow of air necessary for proper coil movement. One interesting feature of Lyra cartridges that had never been adequately explained to mebut was, in a "white paper" I was sentis their use of Japanese washi paper on the underside to protect the damper and coil assemblies from record schmutz and dust. This medium-compliance, medium-mass, medium-output cartridge was designed to work with medium-mass arms. This dual-layer coil raises the internal impedance to 5.5 ohms from 3 ohmsstill low enough to qualify as a low-impedance designbut raises the output to 0.35mV at 3.54cm/s, zeropeak, 45° (Scan-Tech's normal measurement scale)or 0.5mV at 5cm/s, zeropeak, 45° (a commonly used alternative scale). The Helikon's cantilever is of solid boron (not Ceralloy, as I'd reported), with two carefully wound layers of a slightly thinner high-purity copper wire than was used on the Clavis D.C. Compared to some other cartridges, the Helikon is a low-rider. The shorter cantilever puts the coil/magnet assembly very close to the record surface, meaning clearance on warped records is pretty minimal. This allows them to use smaller-diameter magnets (I'd previously written "large") and a shorter cantilever. Scan-Tech claims its disc design "creates a more even distribution of magnetic flux across the entire gap" compared with other ring-magnet designs. The magnetic field is created by two equal-diameter disc magnets mounted in front of and behind the coil gap. Scan-Tech claims the primary magnetic field is modulated by core and coil movements, and that variable eddy currents created in any nearby conductive materials will interfere with the primary field. The Helikon's front piece (it's not really a "pole piece") is made of a non-conductive ceramic material. Scan-Tech claims to have gotten closer to Design Goal No.2 than ever before by eliminating as much conductive material as possible from the vicinity of the generator and gap. Most other manufacturers glue or otherwise attach a finished assembly into a prefab housing. ![]() The rear of the cantilever assembly is actually bolted into the cartridge's main structure, which helps dissipate vibrational energy and prevents same from being reflected back to the coils. This mounting system ensures maximum rigidity and machining precision. and Parnassus D.C.t, the Helikon's is integral to its mounting system, which is made from "one of the hardest aircraft-grade alloys available" and finished with clear lacquer. To correct a few errors and add to what I wrote previously: Scan-Tech's design goals for the Helikon were to: 1) maximize cantilever system-mounting rigidity 2) design a stable, symmetrical, and linear magnetic system and 3) achieve higher output while surpassing the sonic performance of the model the Helikon replaces, the Clavis D.C. (Actually, you don't, which is why I can claim to be generous.) I'm being generous here by including myself, but hey, you know me. Due to a communications screw-up, I passed on to you some wrong and incomplete information about the workings of the Lyra Helikon cartridge in my August 2000 " Analog Corner." Without assessing percentages of blame, let's just say that the three likely suspects (manufacturer Scan-Tech, American importer Immedia, and yours truly) accept full responsibility for the misinformation and miscommunication.
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