Hi Jr W:
In past years we made physically shorter cartridges, like the Clavis DC. or the Parnassus DCt. With these, we sometimes received complaints from owners of certain tonearms such as the SME V and IV. The short cartridge height allowed the tapered armtube to touch down on the LP midway through a side, which was a most unpleasant surprise to the listener when it happened.
Since the Titan, Dorian and Argo, I have attempted to standardize on our cartridge dimensions, to make it easier for our users to change from one Lyra model to another. Those dimensions are as follows: in the vertical plane, between 17 and 18mm from tonearm headshell surface to stylus (with VTF applied), and in the horizontal plane, from 9.52mm (3/8 inch) from mounting screw centers to the stylus.
The only occasions when I have allowed myself to deviate from the above is when the size of the body mechanisms were too large to fit without enlarging the cartridge body. Fortunately, that has not happened in production yet - only for prototype cartridges.
In my recent designs, I have built various internal mechanisms into the cartridge body, and this has required a certain amount of physical space. It would not have been possible to package the mechanisms of the Kleos, for example, into a shorter cartridge, and even so I needed to use shorter components for parts of the body structure than what I normally use.
kind regards, jonathan carr
In past years we made physically shorter cartridges, like the Clavis DC. or the Parnassus DCt. With these, we sometimes received complaints from owners of certain tonearms such as the SME V and IV. The short cartridge height allowed the tapered armtube to touch down on the LP midway through a side, which was a most unpleasant surprise to the listener when it happened.
Since the Titan, Dorian and Argo, I have attempted to standardize on our cartridge dimensions, to make it easier for our users to change from one Lyra model to another. Those dimensions are as follows: in the vertical plane, between 17 and 18mm from tonearm headshell surface to stylus (with VTF applied), and in the horizontal plane, from 9.52mm (3/8 inch) from mounting screw centers to the stylus.
The only occasions when I have allowed myself to deviate from the above is when the size of the body mechanisms were too large to fit without enlarging the cartridge body. Fortunately, that has not happened in production yet - only for prototype cartridges.
In my recent designs, I have built various internal mechanisms into the cartridge body, and this has required a certain amount of physical space. It would not have been possible to package the mechanisms of the Kleos, for example, into a shorter cartridge, and even so I needed to use shorter components for parts of the body structure than what I normally use.
kind regards, jonathan carr