Denon DL-103 "one of the...."

Um, it's not research, dude. It's listening.

Conical styli?!?

Those of us old enough to have read Stereophile when J Gordon Holt was still editor may remember he preferred conicals to ellipticals when both were offered on the same cartridge body. His reference cartridge was a conical Shure and that was based from comparisons against master 15 ips tapes he made.

Now I'm not saying everyone should love conicals simply because Gordon preferred them, but that does suggest some bit of credibility I think.

With respect to the conical stylus, I think the Denon conical is very, very good. I've used 103R's for the past 6-7 years now, both stock and modified and prefer the 103R to some cartridges costing quite a bit more that have more exotic stylus profiles, even though there are compromises/tradeoffs with the conical.

Both my 103R's (one potted in an aluminum body and one in an ebony body) have line contact styli now though (the aluminum has the Soundsmith $250 retip and the ebony has the SS OCL top of the line $350 retip which is a pretty extreme line contact) and having used the same cartridge(s) with both the stock conical and good line contact styli I could never go back to using the concial.

The line contact is simply much better, retrieving a pile of information that the conical either misses or just glosses over in the midband and also being much more refined in the high frequencies.

The downside with the line contact styli is they (particularly the SS OCL) require very careful setup in terms of alignment, azimuth, VTA/SRA and VTF. The window for really great performance is much tighter on setup than it is with the conical which is much more forgiving.

I also think we're pretty lucky today to have really precise setup tools like the Mint LP protractor or the Feickert, items which were probably not readily available to Holt in the days he was experimenting and which are pretty much imperative to get the most out of the extreme stylus profiles.

Sorry if this is off topic, but the thread did seem to be moving to discuss this. I think the 103/103R are great value stock, but I also think they can be modified to be much better and even better value considering the outlay to mod.

It's actually a low (and some consider QUITE low) compliance cartridge. 5x10-6cm/dyne (100Hz)

However it can be used successfully in a medium to heavier arm. Just not for the very light arms suitable for a Shure, for ex.

Very good cartridge, depending on what you want in a cartridge. Does some things well, other things not. Has been simply modified, as at Soundsmith, into a great cartridge.