Upgrade Denon 103 R to Shelter 501 II?

I've used a 103R since April and couldn't be more pleased. Reports on the quality of this cartridge are all over the place, although most of what your hear about the 103 and 103R is positive. Mixed reviews seem to abound, however, with the Rega arms with some users having good luck and others none at all. From all the reading I've done, it seems to me that the 250 is a poor match with the 103 and 103R while many users may be happy (or unhappy as it may be) with the 300.

For what it's worth, I use my 103R with a Premiere FT3, a fairly low budget medium mass arm. The FT3 does have damping capability though, and that damping capability makes a substantial difference in the performance of the Denon. A poster at the Vinyl Asylum recently pointed out to me that in reading that he had done it recommended that the Denon's be used in either a high mass arm or a medium mass arm with damping capability. So for those out there with medium mass plus damping, the Denons could be your ticket. I've also found that about 4.5 to 5 grams of blue tak on top of my headshell made a subtle but definitely audible improvement with the 103R. My FT3 is on an older Michell Gyrodec and I'm using a decidedly low budget phono stage (about $200 retail), but the 103R easily and grossly surpasses the Ortofon MC 20 Super I replaced, which was a) a much more expensive cartridge and b) supposedly a much better match in terms of compliance with my tonearm.

So experimentation may be in order for you. At $250 the 103R is a pretty cheap experiment that, as one poster above pointed out, you can probably recover most of your money on if it doesn't work out. And if it does work out, you will probably be very happy. When I bought my table used many years ago, it came with a Koetsu Black which I used for a number of years. I can buy 6 or 7 103R's for one Koetsu Black and, although my system may not have been as good (and it's still pretty middle of the road or even low budget compared to most Audiogoners) in those days, I can tell you that is what I intend to do. I feel absolutely no need to buy anything other than a 103R. In my modest system, it does a lot of things right.

Let's put things into perspective here. The cheapest Allaerts is about 8 times as much money as the 103R. I would hope it would be better. Maybe it is 8X better, but forgive me if I'm skeptical.

As to proper cartridge/arm matching, it goes without saying that any buyer of the Denon should be looking at that. Hell, I bought a Pioneer PL-12D at a garage sale for my son recently for $5 and ended up spending a bit more money on an AT cartridge than I wanted to and waiting about 3-4 weeks for it to come in because the Ortofon and a couple of other cartridges that the dealer wanted to sell me was not going to match up well with the arm on the $5 Pioneer!!! All I had to do was read the Pioneer manual on vinylengine to figure about half of it out.

As to the compliance numbers on the Denon and its supposed need for a very high mass arm, this has been discussed ad nauseum at the Vinyl Asylum where many people have measured and or listened to the Denon in medium to medium high mass arms and had very good results. While any cartridge is going to benefit from better ancilliaries, there are many users of the Denon with what are supposed to be less than perfect matchups who have reported great results, including bettering cartridges which are much more expensive.

Are the Denons perfect? I don't think anyone is saying that. But to dismiss them as being archaic or poor value is pretty ridiculous.

What were you tracking at before? I'd suggest tracking in the higher end of the range-at least 2.5 grams.

In my opinion (at least in my set-up) the cartridge sounds much better tracking at the higher end of the range. I track mine at 2.7 grams. The lower mass arm (if that's what you have) combined with the lower tracking force may be seriously limiting what you're getting out of the cartridge.

Assuming you just got then Denon Saturday as well, I would a) definitely track it at the higher end of the VTF range at least until it is broken in and probably after as well and b) not make any judgements about its sound quality until you have at least 12-15 hours (or the equivalent of about 40 LP sides) on it.

While the Denon sounds pretty decent out of the box, it is a little aggressive, a little "steely" as some others have described it. At around 12-15 hours, though, it should dramatically improve and really come into its own. You'll notice that it will really smooth out in that time period. Some will say that it requires around 50 hours to fully break in and that may well be true, but in my experience, there is a real transformation at the 12-15 hour mark that makes any improvements in the 15-50 hour mark sound pretty subtle. At 12-15 hours, it's as if, all of a sudden the "light comes on".

And, as mentioned above, if your arm is a bit lightweight (as in the 9-12 range), increasing the mass by 5 grams or so is definitely going to help as well.

But if the Denon is new, you are in for a surprise shortly if you keep playing records on it.