Thanks Mr. Viridian, that's exactly what I'm trying to find out--what are the differences in personalities of the two cartridges. The subjective descriptions of the 103R do sound pretty attractive, but I have a Technics SL1210 and currently the effective mass is about 19g. I could probably bump it up to 24g with a headshell weight and heavy screws. The 301 II should drop right in without much arm tweaking, and it tracks lighter, so that's a plus for me too.
The $64 question is which one would ultimately give me more musical satisfaction. I like my MM AT150MLX but I wouldn't mind a little more bass fullness. If the DL301 II has better bass response I'd probably be happy with that.
I'm getting a new preamp in today (Jolida JD 9A). It has some impedance and capacitance loading DIP switches, but the impedance choices are 100, 300, 1000 and 47K ohm, so I guess I'd have to use 100 ohm for either cart.
It sounds like the 103R slightly tweaks up the bass and midrange. That always works for rock and pop, often for jazz, but not so much for classical. However, I also get the sense from the descriptions that the 103R's dimensionality and musical cohesiveness is the stronger feature and any frequency emphasis is minor by comparison.
Sound about right?
