Question on FR 66s

However, I was told that Lyra was designed and tuned with copper wire in mind (don't know how true this is though) so I definitely want to try that.

from the signal transfer ability Copper is 100% in its highest, purest availability (Audio Engineering Society) so that is the Standard based on AES
Silver has 106, that means, no other material on our planet can carry more than silver, 6% more than copper, 16% more than gold and I think, more than 45% more than brass...
Some cartridge manufacturers know that and use silver plated pins, some audiophiles know that and use silver headshell leads + plugs, some Arm manufacturers know that also and use silver internal Arm wire, some cable manufacturers know that also and use high quality DIN Plugs ...makes some sense for the ultra low MC Signal....my advice for that is, think about that, check your Cable of choice and also the used RCA connectors (most are inferior, even in combination with very expensive cables) and of course, the quality of the RCA jacks from your Phonostage.... :-)
Normally any Signal is degraded here seriously....MY Pods are $200,-- for example, not the usual $8.95 ...
Good sound is based on knowledge about what is responsible for what ...

MIT

Dear Suteetat, The Reed tonearms have different kinds of wood-wands and consequently different eff.mass. Not to mention different lenghts. My 2 A ( 12" ) with Pernambucco
wood -wand has the eff. mass of 27 g. and was a perfect match with the low complience Phase Tech P-3 G. So not the tonearm (name)was wrong but your own wood choice was wrong in connection with the Koetsu. Or so I thought.

Regards,

Dear Nandric, you could be right regarding wood choice. When I ordered Reed, there was really no way to tell which arm wand would be ideal. Actually, I wanted to order Pernambucco as well based on Reed's graph. However, I did talk to Reed before hand about which arm wand to order and I specifically mentioned that I was planning on using Koetsu with Reed. Reed suggested that I go with Cocobolo which has similar effective mass as Pernambucco. Reed also suggested my local dealer to use Cocobolo with Miyajima line of cartridge that they also carry. Cocobolo wand sounds great with Miyajima so I don't think it is the low compliance cartridge issue. It also sounds wonderful with my Lyra, XV-1s and Air Tight in my system but just not Koetsu. It was not bad but I felt the sound was not on the same level as other cartridges that I have. Koetsu on FR was also in its own different league than Reed/Koetsu. Just my own observation in my own system, of course.
As I am very happy with Reed with other cartridges, that was why I said that it was most likely compatibility/synergy issue more than anything else. May be another wood type would work better but I don't have a resource to try all. It would be fun if Reed has interchangeable armwand as I certainly would not mind experimenting that way.
After I sold my Graham, I was considering either Reed 3P or Thales Simplicity and was planning to audition both a bit later on this year but FR 66s kind of fall in my lap unexpectedly so I will leave my analogue front end as is for now.

Syntax, I also agree that in case of phono, silver does seems to make the best sense due to very low signal level. Most cables that I have are silver, using silver headshell lead etc. I was just wondering about copper when I heard someone mentioned that Lyra recommended copper wire. I suppose it is possible as copper wire will have different sound characteristic than silver. ZYX also offers cartridges with different wiring inside and I thought that some people actually prefer copper wire version over silver and gold. Never heard them myself though.