What tonearm is recommended for the denon 103r

@chakster - i am unable to quote your post in my reply - cant see the buttons for that...

I am yet to literally get my hands on it. Should be up and running within a week from now. Will report. I don't think it is run in, and will need a few weeks for that too. But sometimes magic happens quicker than one thinks. I helped put together for a friend a simple lenco L75 on a hollow spring suspended plinth, working hurriedly to install a SME3009ii non improved arm with a DL103. Right off the bat, it nearly matched my SME-V + ART9 on my Garrard 301. I didn't feel very friendly towards my friend when he took it away.

The best I heard was on my Ikeda 407 for the 103r. It did sound surprisingly decent.  And I’m sure other expensive high mass arms are nice to. But I would never restrict my expensive arm to a cheap cartridge. With my FR64fx and Basis vector the denon  wasn’t as smooth or refined sounding. As someone stated already, the 103d, I had one in the 80’s and really liked it. I can’t remember the arm, it was not an expensive arm and was lower mass. It was on an Ariston table, similar to the Linn Sondek. This would be a better choice. Buying a 103 in my opinion is for budget reasons so the arm is going to be budget too or just get a better cartridge. I get the whole idea with getting a cheap cartridge to sound good is fun but there not so cheap anymore. I bought 2 about 5 years ago for $275 each including shipping. Quite a bit more pricey now. Still have one with about 15 hours on it. I find for a single cartridge owner it’s too expensive to get these to perform good that there’s better choices to be made. 

I got the DL103R up and running on my SME-V, Garrard 301. It sounds nice. I have some optimisations left to do. I need to open up my phono stage and change the gain setting (ART9 was 0.5mv whereas 103R is 0.25mv), i need to finetune the pivot to stylus distance (i have assumed it is unchanged since I screwed back the arm on the board with no change to position), adjust VTA and finally run in the cartridge. I can manipulate the loading through 6 settings in the phono. I think over the next month all these upsides should roll in and enable me to reach close to where the ART-9 was.

I usually see the DL103R matched with a high mass tonearm due to it being a low compliance cartridge, the SME V seems to be on the lighter side. I'm glad it's working out for you though.

I have finished all optimizations. In my system, the ART-9 had a modest edge over my Marantz SA10 for most recordings that were done recently (e.g. some recent 24-192 productions like Miles Davis Kind of Blue, and In a Silent Way etc.). The DL103R maintains the same edge. I have managed to extract a bit more from it than I could from ART-9 by changing cartridge loading to a higher 300 Ohms. I have however the suspicion that my phono stage gain was not perfectly optimized for the ART-9 as I had to keep the amp volume at 9 'O clock. Now I am able to crank it up to 10 with DL103R thanks to its lower output, but I should have set phono gain at a slightly lower level with ART-9. All in all, this is the great escape!