L-2 is a 2X33 watt integrated amp, made around 1980. I had a Luxman receiver years ago, it was a nice sounding unit.
Dave
Dave
I don't know the specifics, but Lux Audio became Luxman and then Luxman was later bought out by Alpine of car stereo fame. They maintained the Luxman name for home stereo until they phased the company out. Prior to Alpine purchasing them, their amps and integrated's offered good bang for the buck with their tuners and turntables being "okay". They were not ultra expensive but they weren't mass market "commercially known" products either. After Alpine purchased the company, the power supplies in the amps, preamps and integrated's got a LOT smaller. Since power supplies ( transformers and filter caps ) are about the most expensive components in a high output component, they went there right off the bat in order to cut production costs. As such, the units lost a lot of warmth and dynamic characteristics. Their performance into lower impedances also became markedly less desirable. On the other side of the coin, the tuners after Alpine took over were a marked improvement in performance. Sensitivity, which is where many car audio tuners shine, was much better. Sound quality wasn't bad either, but i'm sure that it can be improved upon by updating caps and wiring. Either way, i'm sure that what you've got is probably of at least good to decent quality. If you haven't already hooked it up, i would connect it to the worst ( most disposable ) speakers or preferably some 8 ohm resistors and let it idle with it turned on for 48 - 72 hours. After this period of time, if nothing seems haywire with the unit, give it a shot with some signal and see what you think. As Bookert2 mentioned and depending on what you are currently using, you might be in for a very pleasant surprise. Sean > |
For what it is worth, the new (last several years) stuff from Luxman is very high quality and sounds great. It also runs decent bucks. A link to their current products can be found here. I do not know how many of these products are available outside of Japan but Japanese solid-state afficionados actively search out the B10 and M10 and M7f amps and the C10 and C7f preamps in the used market, and they certainly don't last long when they come out. The company of Luxman is actually owned by a Japanese company called e-Lux which has as its main business domain name registration and internet billing services. Audio product sales was about 20% of revenue last year. |