Biggest bang for the buck in retipping a new Denton DL103R

Andy Kim, Soundsmith, VAS, Anamighty Sound, etc. all can do excellent work on a 103...all for less than $1k. Imho if you spend more, as suggested above, other carts are more sophisticated. One noteworthy exception in the Sculpture A cart line manufactured by the wonderful Anamighty Sound in Paris. They take the magnets and a few other bits from a 103R and create a serious next level cart out of it.
What loading options and gain do you have in your diy phono?

I just had Andy Kim retip my zu dl-103 and it was less than $500 and he said it was a really hard job because there was a bunch of gunk up inside the body that he had to clean out. I have not had a chance to listen to it yet, so can't comment on sound quality. I have had him retip some other carts for me though and they sounded great.

every suspension is designed for a particular stylus design and mass . so.. chances are it may or may not be better. since the damping and force per contact area changes. what do you think it would perform? that's entirely up to own judgment. 


There are  other denon carts like denon 303d or  103 s with line contact exotic cantilever. I forgot the codes which have the diff stylus cantilever. profile . quite plentiful in yahoo auctions. have a look at other denon Mc models 


or look at hana. it's also alnico magnet. 

Lyra.. make sure u got a good tonearm or tt suitable for it. my 2 cents. 

My budget is around $1K. I am willing to go higher if it means dramatic improvement. I want to be well below the point of diminishing return.

If your budget is $1k why don’t you just buy much better cartridge with warranty from official source?