Lew, the L07D came to me with the Kenwood tonearm rewired from cartridge clips to RCA males. I believe it has Cardas wiring. The fellow who sold it to me said that it was a fairly simple matter to loosen or uncouple the bearing and slip through the wires. Perhaps, but he had above average dexterity. This was amply demonstrated as he described the job while standing upright in the process of dismantling a Lyra Atlas from the detached tonearm without bothering to fix a stylus guard. I once rewired a rare Micro Seiki 808X with broken wires. That was a delicate job that I would not want to repeat.
Chakster, a stock PD-444 is very nice indeed. However one weakness in its design may be the relatively slight structure of the tonearm sleds and the locking mechanism that secures them at a single point. Kenwood put lots of thought into a heroically built arm base that couples to the plinth and motor housing through a massive substructure. My Wenge subchassis for the PD-444 was similarly conceived. I compared two identical SME 3012R arms with ART7 cartridges on the Luxman. The arm on the Wenge pedestal sounded better. On the other hand, if you want to believe that a stock PD-444 is an immaculate conception, so be it.
Chakster, a stock PD-444 is very nice indeed. However one weakness in its design may be the relatively slight structure of the tonearm sleds and the locking mechanism that secures them at a single point. Kenwood put lots of thought into a heroically built arm base that couples to the plinth and motor housing through a massive substructure. My Wenge subchassis for the PD-444 was similarly conceived. I compared two identical SME 3012R arms with ART7 cartridges on the Luxman. The arm on the Wenge pedestal sounded better. On the other hand, if you want to believe that a stock PD-444 is an immaculate conception, so be it.