What turntable and TONEARM brands sound best with the Denon DL103 and DL 103R? MC's

A case in point for the Jelco 750 for compatibility with a wide variety of cartridges is its fluid damping. The fluid damper reduces the amplitude of resonances, whether they are from warps, off-center holes, or less-than-ideal arm/cartridge resonant frequencies. I put a KAB fluid damper on my Technics SL1210 M5G and suddenly it could track hideously warped records without jumping the groove. It reduced woofer pumping significantly, and with that, improved bass clarity (and overall clarity) and dynamics. I have also been able to install a range of cartridges with different weights, compliance ratings, tracking forces, and mounted to head shells ranging from 7 to 14g.

Of KAB’s fluid damper for the Technics TTs, Kevin writes:

All tonearms vibrate at the arm cartridge resonant frequency. This causes the speakers to motion in and out modulating the soundstage. Fluid damping stabilizes this behavior and brings greater stability to the soundstage. Your amplifiers are also over reacting to this very low frequency signal and that can cause even more problems.

It would be better if we could call this behavior "Dynamic Rigidity" for that better describes what is happening. Functionally when a tonearm reacts to the resonant frequency it produces a peak of output energy. This is seen as woofer pumping which is essentially the stylus over reacting to a small warp in the records surface. Fluid damping stops the stylus from over reacting. That is what is "damped". It all occurs at frequencies below 10 hz and has no impact whatsoever on audible dynamics. In otherwords, do not confuse damping of resonance with damping of dynamics they are not related in any way.

Above 10 Hz the arm is seen to be even more rigid at any single point in time and as a result the stylus traces the groove with even more precision. The biggest sonic effect is to make the sound stage more "Still". This can be subtle to some, overwhelming to others. It all depends on your listening priorities.

More info is available at https://kabusa.com/damping.htm.

pani writes:

... I wonder how far a modded 103r can go.

Since Zu Audio’s potted aluminum-bodied Zu-103r is currently out of stock, the DL-103r can probably go this far with Audio Musikraft's modding kits. Art Dudley gave the Audio Musikraft mods a pretty enthusiastic review in a recent Stereophile issue.