In audio some designs enjoy multiple lives, and usually end up being called "iconic". One of such icons is surely the Denon DL-103, in continuous production since 1964. She's almost 60 years old now! This lady has had in fact multiple incarnations. Two of them have been tested and described in Stereophile, starting with my favorite audio critic, the late J. Gordon Holt, in 1975: the historical original design (the one that has been in production for all these years) and the special and rare DL-103S with Shibata stylus. Here you can read the JGH 1975 report, plus some more written many years after by other critics https://www.stereophile.com/content/denon-dl-103-phono-cartridge.
The stylus
The original DL-103 has spherical stylus. Curiously, while with MM cartridges there is this habit of almost taking for granted that the thinner the stylus the better, and spherical and elliptical styli are almost invariably regarded as "entry level", with MCs this is not the case and many accept that elliptical or even spherical styli can be excellent.
The always very useful Vinyl Engine database lists 16 versions (see here) 13 of them have spherical styli, 3 have elliptical styli (or thinner). It is remarkable that none of those theoretically more advanced versions have survived. In darwinian terms, it definitely seems the spherical styli are the fittest. The second longer lasting version after the original one is in fact the DL-103R, which also has spherical stylus.
Compliance
The unusual measure of compliance used by Denon has led to all sorts of speculation over the years about matching the DL-103 with tonearms. Except that it is specified at 100Hz! This is unusual, as most manufacturers specify compliance at 10Hz, where it is much higher. So, for comparison purposes and, more importantly, for arm matching, how much is the DL-103 compliance at the usual 10Hz? Surely higher, but we can't calculate it from the official specs. There is however a source we can consider. Martin Colloms, one of the very best audio critics of all time, wrote in his 1982 multiple review of MC cartridges (Hi-Fi News and Record Reviews, reprinted in the June 2015 issue, pages 124-129) that the DL-103 had a "moderate and well balanced compliance (mass 8.5g, compliance 12cu)". Surely he knew the official figure, so here he must mean compliance as usually measured, i.e. at 100Hz. This is within the expected values considering the official figure. And it can explain why many audiophiles report good matching with medium mass tonearms like the Rega RB300.
Another source maybe is better still. In the same magazine, almost 40 years later, the special edition called DL-A110 has been recently reviewed, with a very interesting lab report by Paul Miller (see here). He measured 8cu vertical and 13cu lateral. Please note that Denon states the DL-A110 is a DL-103 with a new graphite headshell, SME standard. So we can take this report seriously. On the important tonearm matching issue, Paul Miller in his comment mentions the 8cu figure and recommends "medium-to-high mass tonearms". Note however that 8cu is still much more than the official spec. And Paul Miller himself doesn't exclude medium mass tonearms. More important, we usually match cartridges and guns based on lateral, not vertical, compliance. The lateral figure is even higher at 13cu and close to that given by Martin Colloms in 1982. A medium-mass arm seems optimal. In fact, the best match seems to be with an 11g arm. The resulting resonance frequency of 10Hz is usually considered optimal. See the very good article on the Ortofon website for reference.
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