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About to buy a Luxman L-480

M

MyHeresyIsMe

Well-Known Member
Truly, how many Luxman units does one person need (rhetorical---no answers, please!). I do have plenty of Luxman receivers, but now I am the opportunity of buying a Luxman L-480 for a not-so-reasonable price (but the price is not so outlandish either). It has been recently serviced, all toggles work fine, all LEDs work. It has 30 more watts per channel that my daily used R-1050, but.....
It is an L-480. And that is the only substantiation I have for buying it. Because it is a fully working, nice looking L-480 --- or is there other helpful reasons so salve my greedy conscience? I can get into a tuner which I don't have now (aside from the R-1050) and I can put it into my new office.

I do know that the hardware (particularly the switches) will be difficult to find but are the ways to 'maintain' the switches to prolong their life?
Thanks for any input!
 
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30 watts total more, 15 per channel,

R-1050 is 55,

L-480 is 70

No numbers of how many you need to own posted.

Do not flip the switches to aggressively, the part that moves in the switch can break if flicked with your finger too hard.
 
Not so reasonable and you don't need it because you have many other amps? I see no reason to get this. See it as some practice in self-dicipline.

That said, it is a nice and cool looking amp (but I would strongly argue - nowhere near as cool as the R1050). Audibly, there is no reason to think this will be any better than what you already have. The marginally higher available power output is not going to be something you'll be able to notice, either - 55 vs 70 watts really is nothing since the scale is more logarithmic than linear - you'd need more than 100W at least, to be able to play noticably louder. And don't forget - almost nobody uses more than a few watts during listening - even at higher levels.
 
Thank you, one and all, for your replies. I do have to agree that the R-1050 can yield a sound bigger than its 50 watts per channel should be. I will keep my R-1050 because of all of the work I have done on it (rebuilding a from scratch a wafer-type switch for the mode selection took many hours). My collection did just grow though. I did buy the L-480. The 'office supply deduction' sounds good enough to me; plus I would like to see how the Luxman matches my newly restored (refoamed) Boston Acoustics A150 pair. Blue Shadow, I will take extra caution about the switches. They seem to be the most fragile on that model. Please post about the outcome of your L-580. That model must be a monster of an amplifier ('monster' in a good way).
 
My L-580 is on long term retirement at the moment.

I replaced a number of caps and got nothing. Since it has board damage where the transistors get hot, I have decided I can give this one a full rebuild slowly when the time comes. It needs to live in a box for a while.

I have no regrets with this one. I bought it used from the store where I used to work and probably only got a few bucks off their retail since I was a customer then. Back in the mid-late80s, $140 and I know I drove it hard for years and years. still looks great on the outside and the inside isn't bad but those transistors mounted to the board (and the board is upside down) was not a good move on Luxman's part. They seem to have less heat management work done on their gear than other companies.

One day, just not soon.
 
(but those transistors mounted to the board (and the board is upside down)

Luxman did have a way of making repairs difficult just by accessibility. The designer is probably not the fix-it guy. About heat management: I do wonder if the Duo Beta loop cooling was the best way to go. In addition, I had an L-430 with the interesting cooling process, it was advertised at 100rms, it never caught my ear as the R-1050. I sold the L-430 with no regrets. What I AM looking forward to with the L-480 (and the R-1050) is to see how the Boston Acoustics A150s will do after I refoam both woofers.
 
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