The DL-103 dates back to 1962. It was designed for contemporary broadcasting industry requirements and as such, it is an effective mass hog. Matching tonearms start at around 16g eff. mass. The 103 begins to shine at about 19g and just never stops *wanting* more. A 15g eff. mass tonearm can make it sound OK'ish but really just hints at how it should be. It simply lacks the stamina (inertia) to tame the DL-103 because it is a very stiff (low compliance) cart. In my experience, not even the classic
Thorens TP-16 Mk-I (16.5g eff. mass) has enough of it to make the 103 perform. Slap it on the decade older BTD-12S though, and it's a world of a difference.
Most broadcast tonearms of the 60's and the following consumer grade tonearms of the same class, are a natural match for a
Denon DL-103. Those are all high eff. mass tonearms such as the
Ortofons designed to handle the proprietary SPU's, the long broadcasting EMT's plus the older Japanese rivals. Now days most of those vintage tonearms are rare and expensive, so people tend to compromise for what's available and affordable. Whatever it is, the DL-103 reputation, the global affection it attracts with the die hard fan club, was not acquired by mounting it on a 15 gram eff. mass tonearm.
The cheapest and most common tonearm that I found to be a surprisingly good match for the DL-103 is the
Lenco L-75 /
Bogen B-75 /
Goldring GL-75 that is estimated at 23 - 24 grams of EM (no one really knows). Unfortunately it's not much good for anything else. It is a rather low end design of a knife edge bearing tonearm with a poorly implemented tension wire counter weight stub coupling mechanism that's very difficult to fix. The rotten v-block mounts issue isn't a show stopper but it's a royal pain to rewire and I find it rather ungraceful. The one thing it does good when intact is play a DL-103 cart.
Another viable but a lesser common option is the
Thorens BTD-12S tonearm. Some say it's an
EMT inspired design by
Thorens and there are two variants of this tonearm. One was supplied with the TD-135 turntable as an on-deck no-armboard version, with the lateral bearings embedded in the turntable chassis, separate from the tonearm. These are common and pop up on eBay every now and then - though not cheap. The other flavor was a stand alone full fledged tonearm with an armboard, lift bank, bearings housing and cable. I'm not sure about it's effective mass but I estimate it at above 19g. It's VTF exertion mechanism goes all the way up to 8 grams and there's no built in anti-skate mechanism (if that's much of an indication). Whether
EMT inspired or not, it's one superb tonearm, designed for the lower compliant carts of the era. The successor to the BTD-12S was the TP-14 with the anti-skate weight on string and TP-50 headshell, which can play well with the DL-103 as well.
I'm currently using a BTD-12S on a TD-135 with a bog plain DL-103 cart - and it's near perfect. I'm also using a DL-103R on a TD-124 with an early
SME 3012 Series 2 tonearm (stainless steel armtube, larger two parts counter weight). I did not have to modify it but I had to acquire the (missing) second part of the smaller rider weight as an additional lump of mass for my use with the DL-103R. It is a perfect match to my ears.
I've added the tonearms I mentioned already to a list of DL-103 compatible matches that I've compiled off the top of my head. It is nothing but a very partial
and incomplete collection:
- SME 3012 Series 1 or early Series 2 (12")
- Thorens BTD-12S / TP-14
- Acos Lustre GST 1
- Ortofon RS-212
- Ortofon RMG-212 / RMG-309 (12")
- Ortofon SMG-212 (9") / SKG-212 (12")
- EMT 997 (banana)
- EMT 929
- Lenco/Bogen /Goldring L/B/GL-75 tonearm
