help with cartridge selection

I agree with Zenblaster. My Goldring had 95% of the quality of my Clearaudio at way less than 1/2 the price. The M97 will sound less refined but who can argue with the price-great backup cartridge.

No experience with any of those cartridges, or with your tonearm for that matter, but what the cartridges that reportedly perform well on your arm all have in common is fairly high compliance. This makes perfect sense. Your arm is relatively low in effective mass (9.5g according to SME documents turned up by Google searches), which means it was designed for high compliance cartridges.

The Denon 103, OTOH, is a pretty low compliance cartridge. It likes a tonearm of 20g effective mass or higher, and is one of the worst possible matches for 9.5g tonearm.

Changing your bearings would improve the arm in general, but would not normally alter its effective mass. More than that would be needed to get a 103 to play its best. I can't imagine it would be worth the trouble and risk just for that. The 103 is a reasonably good cartridge on the right arm, especially for the money, but there are plenty of good cartridges out there with more suitable characteristics for the arm you actually have. Forget the 103 unless you're prepared to change tonearms. Check out Raul's thread "Who needs MC when we have MM" for many high compliance choices that should perform well on an SME 3009 S2 Improved.

Arm/table matching is fairly insignificant. If the arm fits the table and isn't too heavy for the suspension then you're unlikely to have any issues. I believe your table has no suspension, so for you it's even less significant. Matching of cartridge to arm and cartridge to phono stage are both 1000 times more important. Focus on those.

Just a note here I would not necessarily concur with the Denon 103 being a bad match for the SME tonearm.Over at VA a few years ago John Elison estimated that the real compliance of the Denon was around 10-12cus not 5-6cus given in the Denon manual,as this is a 100hz rating and not the more typical one usually given for 10hz.Therefore this 'new' or more realistic rating would more correctly place the Denon close to the optimum 11-12hz required,thus it's fine to use on that SME arm.Please correct me if I'm wrong here.

I can't speak to the stock Denon 103 but the 14 gram Zu/Denon 103 and 103R perform quite well in tonearms with effective masses around 10 grams. I have many positive responses from customers in this regard.

Zu voiced these cartridges with Rega tonearms which I believe are in the 9-11 gram range.

However, a heavier counterweight may be necessary.

Dealer disclaimer.