Soundsmith Optimized Contour Contact Line Stylus for Rebuild

Again, Raul, the OP did not ask for a comparison between boron and ruby cantilevers.  He did ask for “opinions of those who used this stylus (referring to the SS Ruby cantilever/OCL stylus)”.  That’s what I wrote about, and only that.  I have never owned a Lyra cartridge because long ago I had the impression that Lyra cartridges were a little too “clinical” sounding for my taste.  That was based on one listening experience with one model.  I am willing to revisit Lyra cartridges, and for all I know, boron would sound better on a Lyra than would ruby.  But none of this issue was addressed in the OP’s original post. And now it seems that the Clavis DC may not in fact come with a boron cantilever.  I am eager to see how that plays out.

Dear @bpoletti :  That cerralloy made it more harm to the quality cartridge performance than anything for the better.

That's why, even that I like Lyra designs, never bougth it and only after I found out one with out stylus tip I pull the triger and imediatly send it to retipp asking in specific for boron.

Why boron and not sapphire/ruby?, well I owned in that time too the Audioquest Fe5 that's a truly great performer and both cartridges were made more or less in the same time by ScanTech and the main difference in between was the cantilever build material that in the Audioquest is boron.

When I received rettiped with boron/Gyger that Clavis DC was really in a way different league.

In cartridges cantilever makes a more critical differences than stylus tip because it's the cantilever whom transmit the stylus tip grooves modulations for those movements be converted in electrical signal but the cantilever tends to resonates by it self adding its own developed " vibrations " that puts several colorations/distortions/deviations in the final cartridge signal.

As I said before almost all top cartridge manufacturer models use boron not ruby and Lyra is one of them whom in the Atlas or Etna you can see that boron. Even there is not enough boron material for the manufacturers and in other thread J.Carr comments that he bougth enough material for his cartridges and future cartridge developments.

Now, I'm not saying that a retip Lyra with ruby will sounds bad what I'm saying is that boron is way better and its self material resonances makes less harm to the cartridge signal and that's why I  posted here in agreegment with dgarretson but not with lewm because you was looking for advise.

R.

@rauliruegas Interesting to read your favorable opinion of the AQ 7000 Fe5. I have one of those in storage that I ran for 1500-2000 hrs before mounting a Helikon. Perhaps the Fe5 is worth revisiting with a Soundsmith OCL stylus retip on the Lyra boron cantilever. Any thoughts on whether the Helikon was actually an improvement over the Fe5, or not?

Dear @dgarretson : Yes, the Fe5 is very good performer better than the Clavis DC but different than the Helikon that's too a good cartridge.

I think that you have to mount in your system cleaning perfectly the stylus tip and give at least 4-5 hour of playing before serious listening tests. If what you experienced with and even that has 2K hours then you will know if still is worth to be retipped or not. Btw, I remember the original stylus shape is Ogura LC in boron canrilever.

R.

After serious consideration and consultation with those who actually work on cartridges, I have settled on having Soundsmith install a boron cantilever with a line contact stylus on the Clavis DC I sent there a few weeks ago.