Putting Curtains in the Man-Cave

The Rondo Bronze in all the Glory One of the largest sources of distortion and excellence in any LP setup is the cartridge.  We're big fans of Ortofon, and we took a big leap first jumping from a Grado Sonata1 to a Denon DL-103R then to the underappreciated, excellent Ortofon Rondo Bronze. We listen to a lot of vinyl, around 8-10 hours a week.  But keep meticulous care of our records and clean the needle with every side of a disk.  This means that at best we'd have 1500 hours of enjoyment.  At our rate that is right around 3 years.  We're into year 2, and while everything still sounds fantastic, it is time to start the long arduous process of finding a replacement, since in the mean-time, Ortofon has discontinued the Rondo line.  They have consolidated most of their LOMC offerings into two series:  "Quintet" and "Cadenza" I can have the Rondo Bronze retipped (3rd party), or I can replace it with a Quintet or Cadenza.  Or look elsewhere, but ...

We dug out the trusty Denon DL-103R and mounted it on the Acoustic Research "Arche" Headshell ... and got an incredible musical presentation once about 15 hours had passed with some fussing and adjusting. The Denon's sound will continue improving as your tone-arm and turntable get upgraded, but does justice to what you already have.  It responds very well to careful alignment, but it's forgiving of less careful alignment.  It can go toe to toe with carts costing multiples of its US$379 MSRP (Street price slightly less).  If the basic sound is to your liking, there is also a small cottage industry that takes the DL103 and 103R and hotrods them, too.  The Denon DL-103R is not a perfect cartridge by any means, but it is one of those rare true "giant killers" where you have to spend a lot more to do better, and makes you ask "why bother" when considering such an upgrade. We were happy to recommend it earlier, we're happy to double down on...