The new millennium saw LYRA heading back to the future with the introduction of the Helikon Mono, our first monaural cartridge. Our idea was to take the advanced, modern design of the stereo Helikon and turn it into a true monaural cartridge with many unique features including non-polepiece construction and a non-magnetic, non-conductive front magnet carrier.
The Helikon Mono is completely insensitive to the vertical axis, which dramatically improves the signal/noise ratio without any impact on performance with mono records. The Mono's coil former is a square permeable plate which is oriented parallel to the record surface rather than the 45-degree angle used for most stereo cartridges, and the coils are wound so to generate a signal only when there is horizontal movement of the stylus and cantilever when tracking a record.
The Helikon Mono features a sophisticated Lyra-designed, Ogura-manufactured, boron rod cantilever with Lyra original natural diamond line-contact stylus, and is entirely hand-built and voiced by Yoshinori Mishima for overall neutrality and high energy. Playback of monaural LPs with the Helikon Mono reproduces the energy and presence of music and the musicians to such a degree that you may wonder if more than one channel is really necessary.
Stereophile 2005 Analog Source Component of the Year Runner Up
