I am at the end of my rope, please help

I am going to throw the entire system in the ocean and take up another hobby

do it slowly, start with the Arm first...

Send it to me, I'll throw it away for you cheap. But seriously, why did you buy another multi-thousand dollar cartridge instead of spending a couple of hundred or even less for an inexpensive trial cart? Your story is just so odd. $83,000 spent with no auditioning, no local shop etc.? For 5% you could fly almost any expert out to you and put them up in a fancy hotel.

Yes, very odd story. Perhaps too odd to be true. Maybe the man is having a big laugh while we are trying to figure it out or at least make some sense out of it. If I am right - I salute him for such an unusual approach.

Dear Audiorader, You wrote, "I find it an interesting theory that the higher voltage of the meter may be reading the small resistance in the cart as continuity." Either we are experiencing a problem of semantics or you really have not quite understood what Al, Atmasphere, and I have been saying. This has nothing to do with the voltage of a meter. It has only to do with the fact that some meters, especially but not only cheap ones, have a setting that only gives you a quick reading for continuity of a circuit vs that the circuit is shorted. This could be done via an LED that glows in one color vs another, etc. But the point is that in such cases, you don't actually see a resistance reading (always in "ohms"). Meters used to check "continuity" will not "see" a 5-ohm resistance at all. Such a meter will show continuity between green and red pins or between white and blue pins on your Lyra but probably not on your MM cartridge, which likely has a much, much higher internal resistance. But if you are using a real ohmmeter or a good digital meter on the resistance setting, such that you get real numbers in ohms, then you indeed may have a problem with your Titan.

Then there is an entirely separate issue that says you might not want to try measuring resistance across the pins on a delicate MC cartridge, because doing so can burn up the coils inside. Thus, you conceivably already damaged your original Titan by taking this measurement, and indeed in that case you truly may have "continuity" between pins. So, some guys who have your interests at heart are advising you not to make this measurement on your new Titan. (In truth, before I knew better, I made this measurement several times on a Koetsu Urushi cartridge I wanted to buy, and no harm was done. The Urushi has a 4- to 6-ohm coil resistance, similar to your Titan(s).)

In the old days it was not a good idea to do a resistance check of an MC cartridge because the meter would put a substantial DC current supplied by a battery through the coils which might leave a magnetic field.

Then in the new days the DVMs put an AC signal through the circuit under test instead. The concern is really not a lot different- an AC current through the coils could demagnetize the cartridge somehow. In practice I've not seen it happen, but if you are concerned I would get a 50-ohm resistor and put that in series with the cartridge when doing the test, then subtract the actual resistance of the resistor from the reading.