A hand-built Lyra moving coil that sounds warm and natural, and plays from a very quiet background.
The Kleos is where Lyra's "New Angle" coil geometry starts to pay off. Most moving-coil cartridges are built so that tracking force pulls the coils slightly out of line with the magnetic field. Lyra angles the coils so that they come into perfect alignment under load, which is exactly when it matters. Around that generator sits a one-piece body machined from 7075 aircraft alloy. Its non-parallel surfaces and narrow headshell contact area dissipate resonance rather than storing it. Each Kleos is built and tested by hand in Japan, with final assembly by Yoshinori Mishima.
On the turntable, the Kleos sounds smooth, rich and unforced. It has well-extended bass, a full midrange and an open top end that never turns bright or etched. Its exceptionally quiet tracking lets well-loved records play with far less surface noise than you might expect. Imaging is wide, deep and three-dimensional. It pairs best with a rigid, high-quality tonearm with adjustable anti-skate (VTA adjustment is a plus). It also needs a quiet MC phono stage with about 60 dB of gain or more, or a step-up transformer.
| Type | Low-output moving coil (MC), medium compliance |
| Output | 0.5 mV (5 cm/s, 45°) |
| Internal impedance | 5.4 Ω |
| Recommended load | 95–816 Ω direct into MC input; 5–15 Ω via step-up transformer |
| Tracking force | 1.65–1.75 g (1.72 g recommended) |
| Compliance | Approx. 12 × 10⁻⁶ cm/dyne at 100 Hz |
| Weight | 8.8 g |
| Stylus | Lyra variable-radius line contact, nude diamond (3 × 70 µm) |
| Cantilever | Solid boron rod |
| Frequency range | 10 Hz – 50 kHz |
| Channel separation | 35 dB or better at 1 kHz |
| Body | One-piece machined 7075 aluminum, threaded mounting holes (2.6 mm) |
| Also available | Kleos SL (lower output) and Kleos Mono |
Pearl Audio is an authorized Lyra dealer. The Kleos is on demonstration in our Portland showroom.
