Phono stage for Denon DL103R


I am considering adding either a Denon DL103R or Audio Technica OC9 cartridge to this setup. I presently have a Musical Fidelity X-LPSv3 phono stage and have not been able to determine if this stage will match either of these cartridges. I am trying to determine the amount of gain output by this phone pre-amp. The only information I have is a MC sensitivity of 350uV for 350mV output at 1kHz. Any and all input would be greatly appreciated.
flyfisher
Is thier anyplace here or on the asylum that gives a succint explanation of compliance issues?Tswhitsel gives excelent info but wondering if there is full driections on comliance issues anywhere.Be great if soimeone had one or it could be found on a comercial site (or a book) thatwould explain it,gain,load,etc inn one digestable bite.But this was great.
Cheers
Chazz
PS anybody ever see the college physics book written (before digital) that used Hifidleity as a mneans to teach the subject.Had it many years ago and wish I could find it again.Haven't been able to find my Hartley book in years and don't rmeber how much he went into turntables tech.hear from freind that Fremmer's DVD is pretty good but maybe a little lite but then again he's and engineer and I'm not.
Chazz
To bring some of my perspective in here, in particular with respect to Tswhitsel's comments:

Tswhitsel is completely correct to point out the problems of matching a very lightweight arm like the JMW9 to low compliance cartridges like the Denon. Following the same arguments, I would have expected the Denon to be a very bad match to the JMW9 arm. Nevertheless, I tried it, since I was curious about the Scout and only had a Denon DL103R around. It turns out it wasn't such a bad match at all. I would even go as far as saying that the JMW9 worked better with the DL103R than on my previous Rega derivative arms.

Some details about the Denon compiance: I measured the resonance frequency for the Denon DL103/JMW9/3g headshell weight and got a resonance somewhere between 9-10Hz. Removing the additional weight the resonance lies around 10-11, which is still a very acceptable value.

As for unipivot design with low compliance cartridges (an excerpt from the Van den Hul web page):

Q: I have a unipivot arm from the USA. What sort of cartridge should I buy ?

A: A cartridge with a lower compliance to avoid the well known Olympic game: Groove jumping. When you order a cartridge from our company, please tell your dealer that you need a cartridge for this type of arm. It helps to reduce all kinds of problems.

As a result Van den Hul's comments would suggest exactly the opposite: To mate a unipivot arm with something like the Denon!

Soundwise the Denon is still my favorite for the Scout I have around right nowÂ…just my own experience. :)

Rene
Flyfisher-I'll reiterate. A Denon 103/103r will be fine with your jmw 9 arm. If you are at all concerned about the compliance issue, VPI sells a headshell weight for (I believe) 15.00, but I honestly don't think you'll need it. This is from my own experience, and from many others (see Vinyl Asylum)

As far as your phono stage, you'll need to load this cart at +/- 100 ohms, and have approx. 60db of gain. Don't know enough about your phono stage to comment on those parameters.....
The DL103 range of carts work well with medium mass arms as it is not quite the low compliance cart folks think it is. Some doubt exists as to the way Denon measured the cart and when measured by a number of posters on the Vinyl Asylum the compliance number is found to be in the 10-15 x 6 cm/dyne range.

Another misconception is that low compliance carts don't work on unipivots, but like Restock I have tried the combination and if anything I found the contrary to be true.

As for the gain, the DL103 cart seem to like step up transformers. Use a step-up and plug it into your MC inputs. Cinemag makes step-ups that work well with DL103's that is not very expensive.

Regards
Paul