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.

Hi Richard
RE: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 did both the normal line contact and optimised line contact retips on the 103R. Both are serious upgrades on the stock 103R. The base LC retip gives it better extension while enhancing the mids of the Denon, giving a more liquid presentation. The optimised LC is another leap up. Whereas the base LC gives better definition overall, the OLC goes further in letting you hear more inner detail, like the initial strike of the key and its harmonics, and a more developed soundstage. Its also better at tracking the start/end of an LP.

Since the stock 103R is a conical stylus, VTA is not so critical, but once SS has put on the LC/OLC styli, VTA/VTF are much more important. I've found that it has to be tail down, VTF about 1.8-1.9g (tracks lighter due to the reduced moving mass of the ruby). Mounted on the Schroeder2, it gives an enveloping wall of sound with the soundstage extending from well outside the speakers & room walls.

While the stock 103R is a bargain for the sound it offers, and the key here is coherence, it doesn't have the detail at both extremes, but what it does, it does well- which is a lot better than most carts in, and perhaps about 3x that price range. The LC retip brings it up to the $1.5-3k price range, the OLC retip is in the major league, competing with carts >$3k.

As in all things vinyl, there are many variables here, especially the cart/arm/phono matching, so YMMV.