(£140/$150)
Ok, so I am reviewing a discontinued cartridge, wtf? Well, for the price, new - €105/$150, this cartridge competes with cartridges twice the price and is well worth hunting down on ebay or the interwebs. As with our speaker reviews the cartridge has nearly as many opinions and the listener should trust their own ears to decide what they like. The DL160 is a moving coil unit, with incredibly thin needle. Denon created the first moving coil cartridge in 1951 so 60 years of innovation will clearly count for something.
As important to what this cartridge does is what is does not do and that is emphasizing dirt or pops. It is a very good noise reducer, the sound always remains fat and accurate. I use a DL 160, ADC 1700 turntable, Adcom GFP 555 preamp and Grado SR80 headphones as my affordable by any RWTD enthusiast 'setup' to listen and review all my vinyl selections. Most moving coil cartridges have a low output and require a phono preamp prior to your regular preamp. Not the DL 160, it works perfectly well with output nearly as high as a moving magnet cartridge. Denon now sells the DL 110 as the replacement to the DL160 and I am waiting for payday to pick one up for a comparison. The DL 110 is less expensive at €77/$110. I do own 3 DL 160s, and have listened to them for over 30 years. The DL 160 is well suited to really high energy music and is a sturdy well-constructed and very affordable cartridge. It also works extremely well at a light tone arm setting of 1.5 grams.
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