The Denon cartridges I’m referring to are the Dl 103R and the DL 110 . None of them have a conical stylus as that would be the DL 103 which does have the lower grade conical Stylus . Both DL103R and DL 110 are moving coil designs with super polished Elliptical stylus .
You’re wrong.
Denon DL103R has a CONICAL STYLUS, look at the
specs here. DL103R "Stylus tip: 0.02 mm special round solid diamond"
all styli are polished.
The difference between 103 and 103R is ONLY the 99.9999% high purity (6N) copper coils wire inside the "R" version. This is why 103R is better, but the stylus is Conical @mcmvmx
Some have stipulated that the Nagaoka even though being a MM design its cantilever is really low compliance and not medium or high as some think it to be .
It is a low compliance for MM and you can look at the
specs here, and it’s an average cartridge, nothing special.
If you will look carefully you will see that the stylus tip is BONDED (not nude). It is a low grade cartridge even in Nagaoka family. Being a low compliance MM (6cu at 100Hz) it will work better on higher mass tonearm.
Denon 103R compliance is 5cu at 100hz
Nagaoka MP110 compliance is 6cu at 100Hz
They are both low compliance design for high mass tonearms.
Your Grado with higher grade stylus from 8MZ or XTZ is superior high compliance MI cartridge.
If you trust Peter at SoundSmith
you have to watch his lecture where he’s hardly promote MI (Moving Iron) cartridges, you already have such MI cartridge.
With $400 budget the best you can do is to buy high-end stylus for your Grado Black body.