Review by Noam Bronstein Among phono-loving audiophiles who didn’t just climb on the vinyl bandwagon last week, there’s a large number of us who are familiar with Denon’s DL103 moving coil pickup. Maybe a very large number. The reasons are clear. The DL103 has been in more or less continuous production since 1962. It has outlived so many major audio developments, that we’d need a team to list them all. This is a piece from the golden age of hi-fi, that has somehow defied the aging process. With its’ affordable pricing, and the decline of analog over most of the last thirty years, I don’t know if the DL103 has even been a net money maker for Denon. But somehow, in some small corner of a factory in Japan, they keep churning them out. They haven’t made millions of them, but for a low-output MC, they’ve made a lot. And somehow, as all the ancillary gear has evolved, and (in general) improved, the DL103 continues to shine as a stellar performer. But you knew all that already. And in the last twenty years, the venerable Denon has also sprouted almost a whole cottage industry worth of tweaks and variations – de-nuding, wood bodies, aluminum bodies, [...]
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