The Well Tempered Record Player and Denon DL103

I owned both and could never get the combination to sound right. I tried many different levels of damping fluid, alternate cartridge mountings, even an arm wrap. IMHO, the WTRP arm has too low effective mass to deal with a low compliance cartridge like the DL103, regardless of any other factors. Medium and high compliance cartridges are a much better match.

That said, some have used the same combo and liked it. Maybe they'll post here too.

David

Hi David,and thanks for youe opinion,which is in fact what i was thinking.
The think is that im trying to save some money to buy the Lyra Delos,and i need a cartridge not too expensive to use until i buy the Lyra.
Do you have any suggestion?
Regards

If you're going to pair a low compliance cart like the DL-103 with a low-to-mid effective mass tonearm like what's on the Amadeus, you need to get the tonearm's total effective mass up to around 30g. The easiest way to do this is to get the Zu-103 version, whose solid aluminum body bumps its weight up to 15g, and thus brings the effective mass up into the range you need.

The Zu-103 is available at $439 for the base model and only $499 for the 1% tolerance version, still a low cart investment relative to the cost of an Amadeus. Not only do you get the extra weight, you get a nuded stylus and a resonance-busting aluminum body.

The heavy effective mass requirement of the DL-103 is probably the primary reason some people can never get this cartridge to sing for them.

Johnnyb53 brings up a viable alternative, but I'll say that I tried adding mass at the headshell via Blu-tak and that still, IMO, didn't make the DL103 work on the WTRP arm. It's possible the aluminum body does things other than add mass; I haven't tried one.

I had great success with Shure V15, ZYX Bloom, and Empire EDR.9. Check out Raul's MM thread for lots of suggestions for medium to high compliance carts at all price levels. They should all work well with the WTRP arm.

My experience with high compliance carts like the Shure was that very little damping fluid was needed, just enough to cover about half the paddle.

David

I had great success with Shure V15, ZYX Bloom, and Empire EDR.9. Check out Raul's MM thread for lots of suggestions for medium to high compliance carts at all price levels. They should all work well with the WTRP arm.

The DL-103 is a very LOW COMPLIANCE cartridge. It needs a tonearm effective mass of at least 30g, and a blob of Blu-tack isn't going to cut it.