![]() ![]() The introductions of eight new products confirmed Luxman's US ambitions. In early 2017, Luxman opened a US office, Luxman America, under the leadership of president Jeff Sigmund. ![]() In 2009, stability was fully regained when Luxman was acquired by the International Audio Group (IAG). The reputation of its brand diluted, Luxman nearly capsized, but in the 2000s was rescued by private-equity investment. ![]() Enriched by financial success, Luxman changed hands in a series of transactions that culminated, in 1987, in the ultimate insult: its purchase by car-stereo hawkers Alpine, who forced the revered high-end brand to compete on the street with the mid-fi hoi polloi. Luxman's classic models include the SQ-38 integrated amplifier (1963 "an old standby found in almost all the jazz music tearooms in Japan," per the company history on Luxman's website), the MQ-36 OTL power amplifier (1966), and the M-6000, a 300Wpc power amplifier (1975). Their research resulted in audio treasures that found favor far outside Japan, and that even challenged Marantz and McIntosh for tube-amp supremacy. Playing those receivers in the store fascinated Hayakawa's shoppers and listeners, and inspired him and his brother and eventual partner, Kinji Yoshikawa, to experiment with circuits of their own design. One high-end audio manufacturer, resourceful in both tube and solid-state designs, has weathered selloffs, acquisitions, and fickle audiophile demands to create beautiful, enduring audio art under a name synonymous with Japanese high-end audio supremacy: Luxman.įounded in 1925 by Tetsuo Hayakawa as part of an Osaka picture-frame business, the Lux Corporation was the first to import to Japan radio receivers from abroad. ![]() We're well past the day when the sound of top-tier tube amplifiers can be described as "syrupy" or "too warm" or producing "soft bass." Equally true, solid-state designs have reached a level of maturity at which "sweetness," "fluidity," and "flow" are similarly applicable descriptors, thus smashing the cliché of "cold transistor sound." ![]()
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