Oil Treatment of the Sets of Tonewood Tuning Inserts
The next step of exploration with the sets of tonewood tuning inserts was to treat them with the supplied oil, which effectively applies a hand-rubbed penetrating oil finish to the tonewood tuning inserts.
I applied the oil treatment as recommended by Guy.
First, I spread one pass of the supplied treatment oil onto the front side of each piece in a tonewood tuning insert set, and then I waited 1 hour for it to soak into the wood.
I then removed the excess oil from the set of wood tuning inserts with a cotton cloth and let them sit for 4 hours.
I then spread oil on all of the sides of the set of tonewood tuning inserts so that they were immersed in oil, let them sit for one hour, and then removed the excess oil with a cotton cloth. I repeated this oiling step two more times.
I then let the oiled tonewood inserts sit for 24 hours, and then removed any excess oil with a cotton cloth.
I then listened to each of the hand rubbed and oiled tonewood insert sets with a bunch of different records and musical styles, and found that I liked the oiled tonewood inserts better than those that were not oiled.
Here's a few snippets of impressions from my listening notes with the oiled tonewood inserts:
"Oiling the black walnut (below) tonewood inserts made for dramatically better tone, and pretty much everything sounded better both musically & sonically."
"The Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 phonograph cartridge with the oiled Jatoba tonewood inserts was by far my favorite of the treated tonewood insert sets so far, easily outperforming the treated lime (below) tonewood inserts for my tastes & system setup in terms of overall natural tone, presence, and musicality. Lots of natural detail, great trumpet tone, lots of dynamic nuance, lots of presence, a big sense of recorded space, vivid imaging and soundstage, and with a richness and musicality to the overall presentation that I found quite beguiling."
"One thing that is very apparent as the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 phonograph cartridge gets more dialed-in to match my preferences and system balance, is how much detail is being extracted from the recordings. While a lot of detail is recovered with the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 phonograph cartridge using the oiled Jatoba tonewood inserts, it's not in a lean or overly analytical sort of way, so it adds to the overall musical experience in a meaningful way."
"With the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 & oiled Jatoba tonewood inserts the overall tone was enchantingly musical, and with so many different instruments it was a nice check for timbral realism, which the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 & oiled Jatoba tonewood inserts rendered beautifully."
"The Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 & oiled Jatoba tonewood inserts had an enticing natural clarity on She Was Too Good To Me (Chet Baker), with an information rich portrayal of meaningful instrumental & vocal nuance about which I could find absolutely nothing to criticize, the presentation was simply superb both musically & sonically."
"She Was Too Good To Me isn't an album that displays a huge amount of dynamic range, as it's pretty mellow jazz, but there are a lot of subtle dynamics in the melody lines and harmonies, and I found the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 & oiled Jatoba tonewood inserts to be very good at resolving the more subtle end of the dynamic spectrum, which really helps bring the music alive with a sense of the musician's touch upon the notes."
"With the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 & oiled maple tonewood inserts the musicians had more presence in my room, there was a huge sense of wrap-around acoustic presence, an information rich and nuanced presentation of the instruments, beautiful timbral textures, a high-degree of tone color resolution, and expansive depth to the sound stage. The tempo, melody, beat, rhythm, and harmony were beautifully reproduced, which gave me a really nice sense of emotional involvement with the music."
My order of preference (least to most liked) for the oiled tonewood insert sets followed that of the un-oiled tonewood inserts, Black Walnut, Lime, Jatoba, and Maple. In each case the oil treatment of the tonewood tuning inserts made for a significant advancement of overall performance, providing meaningful voicing improvements both musically & sonically.
I found that the voicing configuration for the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 that best matched my overall system voicing and personal tastes was the combination of oil treated Maple tonewood inserts, the rear tuning screws set for a quarter turn of tensioning, and the front tuning screws adjusted for an eighth turn of tensioning.
With that combination of tunability features I found that the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 more realistically reproduced tempos, timbral textures, and sudden percussive events (loudness & dynamics), than the stock Denon DL-103 on The Dave Brubeck Quartet's Time Out album (Analogue Productions 45rpm reissue), for example, and that made listening far more emotionally stimulating and pleasurable.
The Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 also played with more ease at realistically live-like volume levels, more realistically produced timbral textures of instruments & voices, and was able to more realistically communicate musical tempos than the stock Denon DL-103 on Eric Johnson's Europe Live album (Provogue PRS 74401), which I thought were important improvements to the Denon's performance.
I also found that the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 more realistically conveyed beat & rhythm than my stock Denon DL-103, which I found more strongly stimulated my rhythmic entrainment response to the music, allowing my body to respond more rhythmically naturally to the beat in music, as evidenced by tapping my foot to the music, or being stimulated to clap or dance about to the music, like with live music.
As individuals listening to music, I think we all weight the musical & sonic attributes of recorded music a little differently, and the style of musicality for your hifi that lights up your heart & mind to transport you into a state of musical bliss during listening will vary from person to person, and which you can dial-in to your preference with the Audio MusiKraft Denon D-103.
I suppose that "What is your personal vision for ultimate musicality?" is the key underlying question for most of us listeners, and that the answer will be a little bit different for everybody based on their personal tastes.
That's as it should be, as there is no absolute sound in music or hifi that is best for everybody, but there may be one that is best for you.
In fact, I also posit, that for me, my ultimate musicality has been an ever-evolving personal understanding of what is most important to me when listening to music, with milestones of illumination along the way.
I've been listening to live and recorded music all my life, six decades now, and I'm still figuring things out, and I suspect I always will be until that final bell tolls.
If I've learned anything in my audio adventures over the years, it's the importance of voicing my hifi just the way I want it through a combination of careful system setup, judicious tweaking of components' resistors, capacitors, and inductors, as well as choosing wiring that best complements what I'm trying to achieve.
The easier it is to voice a system musically & sonically to perform the way you want it to the better off you are, and the tunability features of the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 put that ability into the hands of listeners in an unprecedentedly accessible fashion that is both easy and affordable.
Summary & Conclusions
The classic Denon DL-103 moving coil cartridge, designed way back in 1962 as a broadcast cartridge, has been well documented as a superb moving coil phonograph cartridge that has reliably brought music lovers much joy over the five and a half decades of its production, with its only routine criticisms being that it has a somewhat tipped-up top-end and a slightly emasculated bass response.
It turns out that those two minor criticisms of the Denon DL-103 were completely addressed by replacing the stock flexy-flier Denon plastic cartridge shell with the high-mass, rigid, precisely machined, and adjustable Audio MusiKraft aluminum cartridge shell.
Not only that, it has been rather astonishing to me how much additional musical & sonic magic can be coaxed from the classic DL-103 by utilizing the Audio MusiKraft cartridge shell, its front & rear tuning screws, and the tonewood inserts.
With the Audio MusiKraft aluminum cartridge shell and its tunability features that important triad of tone, dynamics, and presence were dramatically improved for the Denon DL-103, allowing me to dial in a very "live-like" presentation of musicality & sonics that resulted in an impressive emotional connection to the music.
I actually have zero criticisms of the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 phonograph cartridge. Its design is a brilliant approach to maximizing the cartridge's musical & sonic performance for a given listeners system balance and personal preferences, it is built to an impressive level of quality, it is remarkably affordable, and it has been completely reliable in use.
For my system balance and personal preferences, I ended up preferring the aluminum cartridge shell Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 with the addition of the oiled maple tonewood inserts, and an eighth & quarter turn of tensioning on the front & rear tuning screws, respectively.
I want to emphasize that what any given listener will prefer for tuning options will be dictated by their own system voicing and personal preferences, and it could well be completely different than what worked best for me, as it should be.
In fact, the true beauty of Audio MusiKraft's tunability features are that they allowed me to dial-in performance to exactly what I wanted it to be, taking the Denon DL-103 from the equivalent of an "off the rack" suit and transforming it into a customized tailor fitted suit.
For those who already own a Denon DL-103 (or DL-103R) phonograph cartridge, Audio MusiKraft offers Denon enthusiasts various cartridge shell kits to replace the Denon's stock plastic shell, starting at $229 USD, which I think is a remarkable bargain for the magnitude of performance improvement the Audio MusiKraft cartridge shell offers.
For those who don't have a Denon DL-103 of their own, Audio MusiKraft also offers Denon DL-103 cartridges preinstalled into an Audio MusiKraft cartridge shell, starting at $579 USD.
You can buy untreated or pretreated tonewood tuning sets from Audio MusiKraft. You can order the tonewood sets pretreated with oil (+$4 USD), pretreated with white shellac (+$4 USD), pretreated with bees' wax (+$10 USD), or lacquered (+$20 USD).
I think the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 is a brilliant product, and I hope that its powerful tunability features stimulate a revolution in realizing the importance of tunability in achieving one's ultimate vision of hifi performance.
I highly recommend the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 to Denon DL-103 enthusiasts, and I think you'll be astounded by the possibilities it presents.
I also recommend the Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 to all vinyl enthusiasts who are considering a new phonograph cartridge at any price point, as it provides a remarkable level of performance that transcends price. With your savings you could buy a really big selection of records!
I would like to thank Guy Pelletier for patiently answering my multitude of questions, letting me interview him, and listen to and write about his "tunable" Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103 moving coil phonograph cartridge.
You can contact Guy Pelletier HERE for questions or guidance, and to arrange for the purchase of your very own Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103.
You can visit the Audio MusiKraft website HERE.
As always, thanks for stopping by Positive Feedback and taking time to read my articles, and may the tone be with you!
