Accuphase vs Luxman

@fire_water 

Thanks for your kind words. I just had a look at your barn — I must say, it’s beautifully done. A perfect blend of character and atmosphere, an ideal setting for music. There’s something special about when the environment, the gear, and the music all align in harmony. Accuphase + LaScala in a peaceful countryside barn… that has to be a truly immersive and organic listening experience. 

And since you live guitars, got couple of recommendations. You may already have them as your favorites. 

Andrea Castelfranato - Duende Live, Fausto Mesolella - Live Ad Alcatrez

​​​​​​​I am working towards Accuphase separates so I can be done for foreseeable future :-)

If it were me I'd look into either upgrading your speaker components or going into better ones.  Once I heard the difference in drivers I upgraded to Volti Rivals that use a much higher quality 15" driver, and much better mid/tweeter drivers.

Changing just the bass driver in the La Scala would be a large upgrade, something that changing your amp won't do.  But once you do that then you'll look at crossover and other drivers and so trading the whole thing up is what I decided.

Best to you!

@fire_water

Thank you for your PM response! Sorry for derailing the thread a bit, but I didn't want to come across as impolite as I was able to PM you today (!) and now I'm not able to do it anymore for lack of a verified purchasing method (?!?). 

The Accuphase A-48S is a musical and highly capable amp that is well matched to your sensitive speakers.  Accuphase really excels in making superb Class A amps.

My Accuphase separates journey started with a C-2450 preamp and A-48 amp.  I upgraded the pre-amp to a C-2900 and was astonished at the improvement in sound quality - less veiled, more detailed, more articulate and very refined and musical.  I can only imagine what more the C-3900 or the soon to be released C-3900S would do.

You may want to keep an eye out for a used C-2900, C-3850 or C-3900.  They would all be an improvement over the very capable C-2300.

I have owned both Luxman and Accuphase integrated amps - and they both make excellent products - though I have a slight bias in favour of Accuphase.  I have no experience with Luxman separate pre-amps or amps, but I love my Luxman D-10x SACD player.

I have pretty sensitive speakers (95+, Audio Note AN-E SPe HE and Pure Audio Project) and they both sound phenomenal with a 300B Audio Note Meishu Tonmeister Silver (around 10 WPC) 

If you don't want to deal with tubes, I had a Pass Labs XA25 and a couple of First Watt amps (17-25 WPC) that are lower power Class A SS and they were also fantastic, particularly the XA25 at 25 WPC into 8 Ohms