Denon DL-103 -- Was it a mistake?

Vinyl Addict, i had a 2M Black with a Rega RB700 and I currently have a Zu 103R/Wood body 103R on a Thomas Schick tonearm. i'll take the latter. the 2m cartridge is great but did not present the music with the realistic palpability and sonic density as the latter combos. PRaT was the same. Additionally, I tend to think the Dynavector cartridges were better in PRaT than these two Denons but that could be a fallacy encouraged by the Dynas lighter presentation. The sound density of the Dynas is lacking compared to the Ortofons and Denons.

What tonearm did you use? As stated by many others, I think this is a crucial issue.

Gordguide:

This seems like a great idea, but I'm not sure I follow exactly what you are saying. Are you saying that essentially you get an RCA "splitter" for each channel, and in one plug you plug in your cable coming from the TT, and in the other you plug in the loading RCAs?

Also, I assume the "loading plugs" would be male-male, so that you could easily solder both ends of the resistor to the + and - ends of the male plug.

I have had both the 103 and the virtuoso at the same time. They are very different cartridges. I always preferred the virtuoso but that is a matter of taste. It will take you a while to get used to the 103 sound if you were fond of your virtuoso. To get the 103 to sound really good you will have to spend some money on a good sut and then see if you like it with the cambridge. Personally although the 103 is a pretty good unit I think you can do way better for not much money.

I assume by "sut" you mean step up transformer. That really isn't an option at the moment, as I only purchased the 103 as a temporary replacement for the Virtuoso. I think that even with the 103 put in an ideal setup, I would still prefer the Virtuoso. Therefore it really isn't worth investing more money at the moment to get the 103 to sound good. I would like to try Gordguide's loading method with the Cambridge, but I'm not entirely clear on how that is done yet.

I agree they are very different sounding carts. I think the 103 definitely has potential, but I could not tolerate the brightness in my system. The Ortofon 2M Red is starting to sound pretty decent in my system now. It isn't fully run in yet, but it sounds more "musical" than the 103. Of course it lacks a great bit of detail by comparison.