Lower mid compliance carts with Phantom tonearm


Many people use Lyra Cartridges with the Phantom tonearm. With an effective mass of 12 grams, most Lyra carts do not fall into the desired resonance range according to the vinyl engine calculator. Why do so many peole use them? Does the resonance calculator matter when using Phantom tonearm?
tzh21y
Tz...that's an interesting one. TBH I don't remember actually using the HFN/RR Test Disc to check H&V resonance in Real Time but have had no issues whatsoever with any disc and I'm about halfway through the life of the cart. My last cartridge, which was used on a 13g Linn Ittok LVII, wasn't so blessed and unfortunately turned out to be sensitive to "pinchwarps"....

The Phantom's bearing does have a damping trough which allows some tuning but the Phantom is reasonably well damped even if you didn't use it.
After initially installing I subjected the Lyra (Delos) to my "nightmare-disc-from-hell" and it sailed through it with flying colours - as if tracking by lasers. After that I ceased worrying :)

I would describe the general behaviour of arm/cart as imperturbable or rock solid.
All the best,
BTW....The other cart wasn't a Lyra but an MMIII...and the Ittok was 11+g - apologies for the typo. (At least I managed an odd no >10g ;)
The compliance calculation gives you a number, but it will be pretty useless. The material of the Armtube (steel, aluminum, wood, ceramic, carbon...) is a factor, the quality of the bearing the next, proper geometry (when it is wrong it is also useless) and then there are some more...
I used a lot of cartridges (maybe 20 or so, I forgot) with the Phantom Arm and that is one of the very rare ones which work very well with almost all. Maybe there are some exceptions but I didn't find one of them.
I had combinations with 9.5-10.3 from that compliance calculation and I got better performance results with those carts in different arms.
Lyra carts are made in Japan. Compliance spec is at 100Hz. For estimates you use 10Hz cu.
Regards,