anyone heard of Luxman amp.pls help

Sean,
The company itself has been around in some form for several decades so I'm not so sure that there are that many completely "original" employees :^) but I imagine that it's much like other smaller Japanese audio companies - the employees/facilities/philosophy stay the same but the boss changes - something which has happened to a horde of them: Kenwood, Nakamichi, Denon, Marantz, FR, Akai, SAEC, MicroSeiki, and others... Still others had their hey-day and then moved down-market or reduced operations.

I am curious though so will see what I can find out by calling the company. If anything, I'd almost see the possibility they could eventually be bought out by D&M Holdings, the firm which was established after the merger of Marantz and Denon not long after Ripplewood effectively took over management control of Nippon Columbia (which owned Denon before that). Luxman sales are so low globally that it might make sense.

Dazedandconfused, I think sogood51 is probably right on the specs. I cannot find the L-2 in the product history of Luxman on their Japanese site but the L-1 and L-3 are both listed as having been 35Wx2. The time is about right too as the L-1 went on sale in August 1980.

Hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for the GREAT link Sogood51! Lots of interesting stuff - Fidelity Research info in English is tough to come by. Many Luxman products which Luxman itself does not have on its own page.

Like mentioned above, Luxman never left. Even when they were selling less robust stuff here in the late 80s thru mid-90s (less robust than before, but still often better sounding than Yamaha, Denon, Onkyo, HK, NAD, etc), they were building very high-end pieces for the Japanese market...pieces that cost $2000-$10,000...pieces that didn't have the compromises of their lower end gear. They are still building and selling thoise pieces in Japan. As a matter of fact, I believe they have a universal player out right now that retails for more than $5k. You can check their website. It's Japanese, but you'll get the general idea.

I'd recommend trying the piece if it's possible. I have had 6 or more Luxman components over the last ten years (dating from the mid 70s to early 90s) and all were very good, very musical components.

Sean, I didn't know until this post you were from Chicagoland.

http://www.hilberink.nl/codehans/luxman.htm has many color brochures of Luxman equipment, though not all of them.

You'll also find other useful Luxman links there.
The company site in Japan has a history page that's a good read.

On the whole, it's fair to say that it's like the Japanese version of the old Marantz in the US. It wasn't marketed seriously in the US until the 70s. Their prices were comparable to McIntosh. However, it didn't have a loyal customer base like Mac, so the prices today are very cheap...because some younger folks have never heard of them.

Luxman did make some of the top tuners in addition to amps. After Alpine took over, they made a lot of lower quality products, but they did maintain a small effort at the no-compromise exotic high end. The LV-105 hybrid amp with tubes and MOSFETs was the first of its kind. The T-03/C-03/M-03 tuner/pre/amp series in the late 80s was probably the last set of great products. if you look at the power supplies in these amps you wouldn't say that they're light weight. The M-03 was marketed in the US as the M-117 without the digital meters. The T-03 became known as the T-117. The C-03 was never not sold in the US, probably because of the chaos in the company's marketing strategy.

hoho