Denon 103r ????

Raul, I can see we indeed have different ideas about music/sound repro, so I'll inform you and others from where I speak.

Music has been my love since childhood, both prerecorded and participatory. I play piano, guitar, percussion, trumpet, clarinet, flute, and just about anything I've ever picked up in my hands. I have owned a music store for more than 20 years and built a recording studio in the back to record myself and other people. I design and build my own tube amplification and speakers, and sometimes tweak my setup till I'm dizzy in the head.

I know what a Selmer Mark 6 Tenor sax, Guild D-40 acoustic, or Sabian medium thin 16" crash sounds like because I can walk right over to one and play it or have one of my teachers play it, anytime I want.

And I am fully aware of the limitations and intricacies of prerecorded music, analog or digital.

If I may, I would suggest you review and re-assess your 'audio priorities'.

Just to add another contraversial addition.

Try using the denon 103R with a cartridge man isolator. Works wonders.

I would like to try the wood body from Ure thou. hard to take off the standard body?

Any credance to the guy who said the 103r is phased reversed??

I'm not so sure that the cartridge is actually phase reversed so much as the pin arrangement on the Denons is different from other cartridges possibly resulting in incorrect hookup and phase reversal, but perhaps someone else can shed more light on this.

As to removing the body, this is a fun watch:

http://www.thomas-schick.com/Denon103.htm

It's pretty simple. Tried to post it as a link but had problems.

Seems the link does work!

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.