Sme 3009 II ..... wich cartridge?

Thanks to all for the comments. Amandarae, my DL103 has the wood body.

It will work fine with the Denon and the Shelter! But it will sound much better IMO if your SME Series II has a detachable headshell and you can change it to a heavier one that will increase the cart+headshell weight.

I am running a DL 103, and a wood body DL 103 on a SME series II with a TD 124 MKI or an MKII. The wooden cartridge body attach to the headshell increase the cartridge weight (the SME headshell weight which is approximately 7 gms) to 20 gms. which of course increased the 12 gms effective mass of the stock series II arm + SME headshell.

You can get a Yamamoto HS-1A Ebony wood headshell which is about 10 gms if you do not want to try the Denon woodbody route. Or you can look for Orsonic headshells (10-16 gms variety). I do have both the Yamamoto and the Orsonic AV-1S (16 gms).

Yes, yes, people will tell you that the Denon's compliance (5 x 10-6 cm/dynes) was calculated at 100 Hz instead of the common 1 kHz and thus, make the compliance close to 11 which is a mid-compliance cart so it will work fine with a mid mass arm. But believe me, the Denon 103 sounds much better on high mass tonearms. Same is true with the Shelter as I owned both the 501 and 901 before. Of course, you have to try it first and see for yourself.

regards

It will not work well with the moving coils. The V-15 is apparently out of production but the 97 is still available. The MM Ortofons would also be good. Look for a compliance above 20, the Shure dates from an era when ones above 40 were common. I also am not familiar with the Nagaoka, it it is a MM it would be the best choice of those you list.

SME 3009 II likes high compliance cartridges. I used to have one years ago. I don't know anything about the NAGAOKA but I am afraid both the DENON and the SHELTER are too stiff (low compliance) for the SME.

An ideal match would be something like a Shure V15.

I made a mistake, the DENON model No. is DL-103. Sorry