Best Cartridge for Less than $500

PLEASE LISTEN

In my brief analog career (6 plus years) I have not heard a cartridge that is the "crem de la crem" as my Denon DL 103 plain jane (no R designation)NO It's not perfect but what is? Having owned the Dynavector DV 20X-H (lovely cart btw, but overpriced)IT stays in it's case, Shure V-15 mkIV (I think) nothing allows you to merely enjoy the music with No FUSS,NO HYPE,with none of the Audiophile trick,mega-buck jargon having...BLAH,BLAH BLAH. etc,,, do yourself a favor and consider this cartridge as long as your pre can handle it's rather low-ish output 0.3mv...And DON'T make the same mistake I made and mount it within one of those beautiful ebony or panzerholz bodies!! forget it, ALL I CAN SAY IS WOW! these carts can be had for under $250 so do yourself a favor, stop here and spend the rest on vinyl,then as your sytem matures as your taste does, then consider other more substantial cartridges or MAYBE not
til then
ENJOY THE MUSIC

just my two pennies
braab

Braab8: Just to be clear on this, are you saying that mounting your 103 in an Ebony or Panzerholz body did NOT improve it? If that's the case, which body did you try and who did you buy it from?

No HDM that was just a feeble attempt at humor, :-))I currently own the plain jane 103 with Uwe's panzerholz body on an OL silver,twl's HIFI modin a word this setup is PHENOMENAL!! <---did I just say that outloud?) well worth the trouble of obtaining and going thru the painstaking (read SWEATING) process of nuding it then getting it into it's new body
now HDM got any ideas as to what SUT I can use?

The Zu Denon 103 (reviewed rather ah... favorably by Art Dudley recently) in an amazing upgrade over the denon 103. The Xacto knife nuding demo made me cough up the extra 50 bucks and I'm glad it did.