Uberwaltz, you’ve received a lot of excellent comments above. I would add that a good means of narrowing the bewildering range of choices you would have in going to an LOMC cartridge would be to choose one having comparable weight and comparable compliance to your present cartridge. In doing so you would minimize the possibility of a mismatch between arm and cartridge, since your present cartridge appears to be commonly supplied with your turntable.
Your present cartridge weighs 8.4 grams. Its compliance doesn’t appear to be specified, but the compliances indicated at vinylengine.com for numerous Clearaudio moving magnet cartridges are all 15 x 10^-6 cm/dyne, presumably at 10 Hz. (Cartridges manufactured in Japan typically have compliances specified at 100 Hz, and to equate those numbers to the 10 Hz specs used by European manufacturers multiply the Japanese numbers by a factor in the area of approximately 1.7, as I understand it).
That would seem to rule out the Denon DL-103 and 103R that were mentioned. Although their weights (8.5 grams) are very close to the weight of your present cartridge, they have 100 Hz compliances of only 5 x 10^-6 cm/dyne.
Also, while I’m not familiar with the phono stage you have purchased, and specifically with its noise performance, keep in mind that choosing a cartridge having a rated output in the area of say 0.5 mv is less likely to result in excessive hiss than one having a considerably lower rated output, such as the DL-103R (0.25 mv). I note that the description of the phono stage recommends a minimum cartridge output rating of 0.15 mv, but I would take that with some grains of salt. It's usually a good idea to provide significant margin relative to published specs.
Good luck with your choice. Regards,
-- Al
Your present cartridge weighs 8.4 grams. Its compliance doesn’t appear to be specified, but the compliances indicated at vinylengine.com for numerous Clearaudio moving magnet cartridges are all 15 x 10^-6 cm/dyne, presumably at 10 Hz. (Cartridges manufactured in Japan typically have compliances specified at 100 Hz, and to equate those numbers to the 10 Hz specs used by European manufacturers multiply the Japanese numbers by a factor in the area of approximately 1.7, as I understand it).
That would seem to rule out the Denon DL-103 and 103R that were mentioned. Although their weights (8.5 grams) are very close to the weight of your present cartridge, they have 100 Hz compliances of only 5 x 10^-6 cm/dyne.
Also, while I’m not familiar with the phono stage you have purchased, and specifically with its noise performance, keep in mind that choosing a cartridge having a rated output in the area of say 0.5 mv is less likely to result in excessive hiss than one having a considerably lower rated output, such as the DL-103R (0.25 mv). I note that the description of the phono stage recommends a minimum cartridge output rating of 0.15 mv, but I would take that with some grains of salt. It's usually a good idea to provide significant margin relative to published specs.
Good luck with your choice. Regards,
-- Al