Denon 103r ????

The stock 103R is a fine cartridge, lived with it for a year or so, but the Soundsmith retip with optimised line contact takes it to another league, not shamed in the company of multi-kilo buck carts. Both musically involving and detailed, able to throw a deep and wide soundstage. Best used with the arm tail-down and tracking at 1.9g.

If you have "Edge" from the denon, you have an issue with matching it to the Arm, the Phono amp.. or your system is simply "hot sounding" or your room needs some acoustic attention. No doubt ANY cart or combo can be made to sound wrong, but its very unlikely it is the Denon on its own in a nutshell, many other factors need to be looked at.

Cmk,

Care to share a few more impressions of the Soundsmith retip? This is one I have been seriously looking at, and I'm curious if you repotted it in the ebony body, nuded it, or simply retipped with the line-contact/ruby cantelever?

I tried the Zu103, and didn't really care for it all that much - it really brought out the hi-fi abilities of the cart and spruced things up throughout the spectrum, but I felt music sounded fragmented and disjointed through the cartridge. The Zu cart also wasn't the best resonant match on the Triplanar. I find the stock 103 to be a better music maker all around (warts and all). YMMV.

-Richard

Dear Storyboy: First an only for we are on " stage ": other than my own 103 I already heard other three 103 in my system along two other 103R from friend's of mine, so I know 100% what I'm talking about.

Now, what I'm trying to say is that the 103's are overrated, for its price are ok but nothing more ( at least this is my experience with them ) and IMHO certainly not a " giant killer " like many people think about.
The problem with that, the 103 are over-rated, is that many people, like Pedrillo, are frustrated about because they bought/buy the 103 thinking that they will find a very high quality performance from these cartridges and when they can't well: frustration!!.
In other way if all of us give the 103's very clear its right " place " I can tell you that everybody will be happy, even Pedrillo.

Now, other subject is that my quality cartridge music/sound reproduction level performance is ( for what I see ) very different from yours and from other 103?s lovers.

Btw, from the ones that you own/named ( congratulations for it ) at least the Astrion, Astatic ( both ), the B&O and the great AT-170 in my own experience ( with the right tonearm/load impedance/capacitance/phonolinepreamp ) outperforms the 103's, but like I say it's only in view of my audio priorities that are different against other people.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Richard: With respect to the Zu 103, this is only speculation on my part as I have only experienced a wood bodied 103R, but reading between the lines at vinylasylum I get the impression that those who have experimented with both the wood body and the nude/brass top plate tend, for the most part, to prefer the presentation of the wood to nuding with a metal plate. My take on it is that, although they found the nude/metal plated 103 to be more detailed, they also found it to be a bit hi-fi-ish.

Most of the Denon fans (I believe) are drawn to its midrange and top to bottom coherence-I think the cartridge definitely leans to the warmer side of neutral and the wood body, in my experience, tends to give you more detail and slam without changing the overall impression in quite the same way that it appears nuding or metal bodying the cartridge might. Similar perhaps the sonic differences exhibited by metal and wood footers or support?

At the present, I haven't heard of anyone that has Soundsmithed in a wood body; there's a lot of speculation that might be the killer combo.