New Cartridge advice

Denon mc cartridges are still the best bang -for- buck mc cartridges. I have several, including a 304. In stock form they sound excellent! The Hana SL (Shibata stylus) sounds excellent too but at $700 is more expensive. 

@markmoskow 

My Denon Dl-62 has both the straight and s-curved tonearms. Which would give better results with the Denon 301MK2? In the manual, it looks like the straight arm is for lighter carts. I do like the head shell mounting system on the S tonearm.

If your Q-damping is working well it may not matter. In general, the Denon 3-series carts are light and go well with lighter tonearms, like the short one, while the S might work better with heavier carts, but the Q-damping should make them relatively resonance neutral. One of my original 301s, the lightest of them all, is on a very light unipivot (Magenpan Unitrac) on a Denon 55k. The 103 is heavier than the 3-series carts, and you could try it on the S. The Hana is light like the Denon 3-series should sound fine I would guess. On these Q-damped tables/arms (I have a JVC, similar or the same tech to Denon, I believe), to my old ears everything sounds good.

All good cartridge advice, but what piqued my interest was your use of the great Linn Nexus speakers from the 1990’s. When I worked for a Linn dealer during that period, the Linn Nexus were the speakers (along with the Linn Intek integrated and an LP-12 - Ittok- Troika) I would listen to when I just wanted to chill with some music even though we other high-end speakers like B&W 801’s and Martin Logan electrostatics on demo.  I always thought the Nexus sounded best right up to the wall behind with nothing in between the speakers.  I hope you have the matching KuStone stands for them.  It was ingenious of Linn to design those stands with very, very long bolts that threaded up from the stands into the internal braces of the speakers.