Vintage Denon tonearms...any good?

[oldius]

I have a DA-401 arriving soon as a partner to my ADC ZLM. I always wanted to try one as I am a Denon fan but it is also said to be a perfect match for that cartridge because of its incredibly low mass (carbon fibre arm tube and resin headshell). I will report back.

[walpurgis]

Should be interesting, post some photos.

As I'm sure you know, The Mayware Formula 4, Mission 774 and Hadcock arms are good with most ADCs.

[oldius]

Yes, I just had a Denon itch - Japanese deck too.

[walpurgis]

The only Denon tonearm I recall owning had the wobbly 'dynamic' counterweight. DA-307 I think, very nicely made but too heavy for high compliance carts.

[oldius]

Yes, definitely too heavy. I think that was designed more for the 301/304 cartridges and the 309 for the 103.

The 401 is ultra-low mass, specifically designed for the high compliance carts of the day. The ADC ZLM works well with my AT (Phonomac) arm, very well in fact, but I think I can eke a little more from it because the Phonomac arm is a medium mass, rather than a lightweight, arm.

[oldius]

The DA-401 arrives today, earlier than expected given it was only posted in Japan on Wednesday!
Armboard currently on the lathe with Magna Audio.

[Marco]

Good luck with this, Geoff. Hope it hits the spot - post some pics when you've got things up and running

My preference is to go the other way with Denon: the high-mass route, with low-compliance MCs, as it produces a sound I prefer.

Marco.

[helma]

I have a Denon DA-305 which seems very "broadcast" in it's design except it's only 9", though of the longer variety as far as that goes - 230mm mounting distance which seems pretty common for vintage Japanese arms. It's a well made arm with good looks, but it has that weird decoupling thing at the bearing. What that means in practice is that if you take hold of the arm tube and try to twist it, you can actually feel the damping (rubber?) compound giving in a bit. In normal use it doesn't feel odd or squishy or anything, just a bit "soft". If you take a hold of a Rega RB series arm tube for example, you can instantly feel how solid everything is, the Denon feels the opposite of that. It's not a bad feeling though, so from aesthetics view point all is good.

As for sound quality, I feel it's a mixed bag. The downside of the decoupling is some apparent loss of detail, things just aren't as crisp and defined as with some other arms, what I can compare with is Fidelity Research FR-54 and a Sumiko MMT since those are the two other arms I've used with my Lenco. The overall sound is also a bit 'soft', maybe overly smooth. The upside is the arm is not adding any fake detail either from high frequency ringing/resonances, the sound is quite composed, the bass is clear and well controlled, if maybe a tad soft as well. It's certainly not the best arm for any kind of "hifi fireworks" where your breath is taken away by the holographic stretching of images across a 4-dimensional time space and where you can hear the triangle player adjusting his grip on the beater between the 2nd and 3rd joint in his finger, but it's a perfectly fine arm that will never scream at you. It lacks antiskating and it's somewhat on the weighty side. I would love to hear it with a DL-103 one day, I think it could be a nice match.

Ultimately better option though IMO is a rigidly coupled arm (like most of them are) with fluid damping - that really seems to give the benefits of damping without the downsides of the Denon approach, so you get best of both words. That said, after a fairly recent move I've yet to set up my Lenco, so I've been listening to my Denon DP-3000 w/ the DA-305 arm & AT-30E MC cartridge and I've been perfectly happy with the combo. The Denon arms seem usually pretty affordable on the used market, so if you are curious, it's not a big investment. For what it's worth, used with my DP-3000, I could not hear that much of a difference between the DA-305 and FR-54. Maybe it's some weird synergy between the Denon components, or more likely the particle board plinth I build for it.

[oldius]

I am utterly delighted with my Denon DA-401 and ADC ZLM combination; a compliance match made in heaven.

Sent from my 2201116TG using Tapatalk

[Barry]

The counterweight assembly looks very similar to that of the later ADC arms, intended to partner the XLM and ZLM cartridges. I assume ADC didn't manufacture the arms themselves. Perhaps Denon made them for ADC, which is why your arm works so well with your ZLM.

An ADC LFM-1 tonearm: