Brand new Lyra Delos - skewed cantilever

Hi everyone, it has been a very long while. My SME IV was serviced so I had to wait a few more months to finally experience the Lyra sound.

First of all I thank all of you for your help. My Lyra Delos is now singing beautifully, and I am amazed at the amount of details it draws from the grooves. I found the sound was a bit lean at first so I decided to set the load at 116 ohms rather than the recommended 130 to 260 ohms.

We'll see when it is totally burnt-in.

Dear Jonathan, 

Thanks a lot for your very quick reply. I will advise my dealer immediately and will return the cart to you. 

Hi everyone sorry was at work all day. I set it up but saw that skewed cantilever right from the start.

Anyway thanks a lot everybody! 

I have got news from my dealer, the Lyra is on its way back to me after a short trip to Japan. From what Lyra told me it seems the screw at the front of the cart had been squeezed too tight, skewing the cantilever and causing distortion. Thank you Lyra, can't wait to do some serious vinyl rediscovering.

Hi everyone,

thank you for all your very useful advice and info.

I am very happy with my Lyra, some surface noise which was present with my old Hana sl has disappeared and it is very nice!

However, something I did not expect: a couple of my records have a skip or a loop that was not there when I used to read them with the old cart. It happened this morning on one record I had never had problems with, so I took the antistatic brush and brushed the record again (my records are clean and stored in antistatic sleeves, but you never know) and everything was fine. So it seems the cart is very sensitive to dust in the grooves, even tiny particles.

I took two pictures of the stylus with my phone just to be sure it wasn't the stylus (it has 20 hours under its belt now).

OK now I don’t know what to do. Another record, another skip.

Now I’m afraid of listening to another record for fear of damaging it.

Is there any product I could use to completely clean this stylus?

I’m wondering if it is a problem with the stylus, my records or my setup. Arm is parallel to the record, antiskate is 1.75, VTF is also 1.75 and I have tried to set the tonearm and cart very precisely.

Maybe I should send the cart back to Japan for an inspection of the stylus? I am really confused.

All my records used to be fine before I had all those skips. Now I've got to replace 2 of them! 

@mijostyn , shouldn't the antiskate be increased if I want to avoid jumps forward? 

Thanks a lot everybody. It is true that kind of thing can make you wish you'd never chosen vinyl in the first place... 

The thing that bothers me is the needle. Either it is really small, or it is damaged (which would explain the skips). I'll try and look at it under a microscope at work. 

Hi everyone, thank you for you comments and advice. I have taken the Lyra away from the turntable to have a look at the needle under a microscope. I also have a CBS STR100 record, I might use it to assess the state of the needle (if it looks fishy). After dropping the needle from the equation I'll turn to antiskate. 

I think this looks OK!

https://ibb.co/x2SDwYw

It does to me too, was afraid it had been damaged. I'm now on my way to check antiskate. 

Yesterday I re-aligned the cartridge, tonearm was very very slightly off. I'll check with other records if the problem is still there but for the moment it reads the records beautifully.

I'll check with the problem records at the end. 

Thanks a lot everyone for chiming in.

I reset tonearm angle (SME IV), made sure that the arm was parallel to the record surface, and the rest. I also reset azimuth which was a bit off, but that is the difficult thing with the SME.

No record has skipped since then, but I am going to go through my collection before trying the two faulty records again.

@lewm : your message gave me an epiphany this morning and I checked the arm lift. It was set too high, so my raising the tonearm by one fraction of an inch the other day actually made things better because of that.

So I guess there is no mystery anymore!

However the two problematic records I have still skip, possibly because of a tiny groove wall rip which the hana sl could not go through (too big a needle).

I’d love to repair that but have no equipment. Shame though, everywhere else they’re fantastic records.

Hi everyone, sorry for the delay but I was burglared so had to spend much time at the police station. Fortunately not much was stolen, even though they tore the cover for my Beatles in Mono box set, the b*st*rds!!! 

Thanks a lot for all your advice, I do not have an ultrasound RCM but will definitely be on the lookout for one.

I have used the soft brush provided with the old Hana SL and the stylus looks much better.

Hi everybody, just a small update after all this time.

I haven't bought an ultrasound machine but I did buy the Lyra cleaning fluid, and it works wonders.

The two skipping records I managed to fix myself, and I have had no further skipping problems.

The cart is now 63 hours old and it has a fairly flat frequency response, despite the exuberant highs. I am slowly waiting for it to have a tiny bit more body, I have heard it gets better after 100 hours.

Thank you everyone for your help, this cart is a keeper!