Sooo...as a result of J!m's V15-V thread, Overmodulated and I came to terms on his Denon 301 cartridge - me not paying attention to my own signature line and thinking that's what I had and not the higher-end 304 that I actually have. Short story long, said 301 arrived yesterday and I've installed it on my extra head shell. Been listening to both cartridges this morning and it's certainly interesting. It is taking a bit of time to swap out cartridges; the 301 is quite a bit lighter than the 304 and it take a bit of effort to rebalance the tonearm each time I switch.
Both are very good low-output moving coils and there is definitely a Denon "house" sound. Even though there's a couple of grams difference between them in weight, they share the same body, which leads me to believe the 304 is a hot-rodded 301. The 301 has the same strong bass, good treble, no real presence "hump" (or my ears are just shot), and the wide, deep sound stage I hear on my 304. The 304 is a bit smoother up top and I hear a little more air around the instruments, but there aren't any eye-popping differences. The 301 has a bit more output using the same loading settings on my phono preamp as my 304 and if I get serious about using it instead of the 304 I may play with the loading on it some to see if I can make any incremental improvements to its sound. As it is, it's more similar to my 304 than not and that's a good thing considering the difference in new prices between them.
Understand that I love my 304 and am glad its stylus is still in good shape but the bottom line is: I like the 301 a lot. At some point, I'm going to try to wring a little more performance out of it playing around with my preamp settings. I can highly recommend the 301, especially for medium to low mass arms.
Both are very good low-output moving coils and there is definitely a Denon "house" sound. Even though there's a couple of grams difference between them in weight, they share the same body, which leads me to believe the 304 is a hot-rodded 301. The 301 has the same strong bass, good treble, no real presence "hump" (or my ears are just shot), and the wide, deep sound stage I hear on my 304. The 304 is a bit smoother up top and I hear a little more air around the instruments, but there aren't any eye-popping differences. The 301 has a bit more output using the same loading settings on my phono preamp as my 304 and if I get serious about using it instead of the 304 I may play with the loading on it some to see if I can make any incremental improvements to its sound. As it is, it's more similar to my 304 than not and that's a good thing considering the difference in new prices between them.
Understand that I love my 304 and am glad its stylus is still in good shape but the bottom line is: I like the 301 a lot. At some point, I'm going to try to wring a little more performance out of it playing around with my preamp settings. I can highly recommend the 301, especially for medium to low mass arms.
